Rome - A ship carrying hundreds of Kurds and other people but with no captain was intercepted off south-eastern Italy yesterday, one day after President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro said Italy's arms were "wide open" to immigrants fleeing persecution.
Officials said 386 people had been found aboard, including a one-month-old baby. They were ferried ashore in boats to Otranto, in the heel of Italy, and coastguards described their condition as relatively good. Some of the immigrants told volunteers the six-member crew had fled in a lifeboat once they spotted a helicopter overhead.
They said the crew had stripped them of money, jewellery and valuables during a stop-off in Sarande in southern Albania, and that they had survived on bread and water during the crossing, which took eight to 10 days.
The latest arrival was the second within a week after 825 immigrants, mostly from Turkey and Iraq, had to be plucked from their ship after it ran aground off southern Italy.
Italy's interior minister, Mr Giorgio Napolitano, told reporters that Italy would adopt a "positive attitude" towards asylum requests from Kurds. "There is no doubt that persecution of Kurds in Iraq and certain regions of Turkey exists. We have also decided to bring the question of the rights of the Kurdish people before international bodies."