A boatload of 92 migrants believed to be from Afghanistan and Syria including 23 women and 29 children arrived in Italy from Turkey on Thursday in the latest landing in a flow of undocumented migrants.
The fishing boat’s crew, who can be prosecuted for facilitating illegal migration, took off on a motorized dinghy before police arrived on the scene.
The migrants were all in good health except for a seven-year-old girl who was already sick before the voyage and has been hospitalised, officials said.
The other migrants are being put up in temporary accommodation provided by local authorities in Roccella Ionica in the Calabria region.
Local police said the boat was around 20 metres long and the migrants said they had paid around 3,000 euros ($3,900) each for the five-day voyage.
Around 8,000 undocumented migrants are estimated to have landed in Italy so far this year — compared to 60,000 last year when the Arab Spring revolts in Tunisia and Libya were causing upheaval across the region.
Several dozen Tunisian migrants are estimated to have drownd earlier this month while they were trying to reach the southern island of Lampedusa — one of the main gateways for undocumented immigration into the European Union.
