AFP - Nearly a thousand immigrants from Tunisia and Libya have arrived in the course of the night from Monday to Tuesday in Sicily and Lampedusa aboard several boats, said the Italian Coast Guard.
The first boat, a large fishing boat about 35 feet long with nearly 500 people on board including women and children, arrived shortly after midnight near the coast of Ragusa, in southern Sicily.
The boat ran aground on rocks near the coast and immigrants, mostly Eritreans, Somalis and citizens of other countries in the Horn of Africa, fleeing the fighting in Libya, were transferred ashore aboard Coast Guard boats in small groups.
About 450 other immigrants also arrived aboard three boats in the night on Lampedusa, a small Italian island that is crumbling under the weight of illegal Tunisian which nearly 20,000 have arrived in recent weeks.
The first boat was carrying 190 people, mostly Eritreans, while two others carried Tunisians.
Faced with overcrowding of immigrants in Lampedusa, an Italian ship left the island with 827 people on board who arrived Tuesday morning in the port of Taranto, in Puglia, southern Italy, where they will be transferred in a temporary shelter set up in this region to cope with the influx of immigrants.
