The Italian government has proclaimed a state of emergency in Sicily to combat a growing influx of illegal immigrants, two days after a ship containing 1,000 Kurdish migrants landed on the island.
The state of emergency will give local authorities, notably police, increased powers to manage the sudden problems brought on by such mass arrivals of illegal immigrants.
The 928 Kurds, including 361 children, were on board a crippled ship that had sailed from Lebanon and was towed into Catania on Monday. The migrants were yesterday taken on a fleet of buses to a military base near Bari in the Apulia region of southern Italy.
AFP