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Italy appeals for EU aid as migrants flee Tunisia
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Italy appeals for EU aid as migrants flee Tunisia
AFP - Monday, February 14
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LAMPEDUSA, Italy (AFP) - – Italy appealed Sunday for urgent EU aid to halt a wave of illegal immigrants fleeing Tunisia, and said it wanted to deploy its forces to that country, as hundreds more arrived by boat.
The new arrivals on the island of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost point, took to more than 5,000 the number of undocumented immigrants intercepted by coast guards and brought to the tiny outcrop in the past five days.
The European Union said meanwhile it was looking at ways to help, while Tunisia deployed its maritime forces to try to stop the exodus, according to a government source.
The immigrants said they were fleeing poverty and continued unrest in the North African state in the wake of an uprising last month that ousted veteran ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power.
"We are afraid. The revolution in January has changed nothing, absolutely nothing. We want to find a job in Europe. We are asking the Italian people for help," said one man interviewed by news channel SkyTG24.
Another man said: "There's no work there. None of my family can work."
The authorities in Lampedusa, which usually has just 6,000 residents, were swamped. Some immigrants were put up in local hotels and officials on Sunday re-opened an immigrant detention centre.
Around 1,500 immigrants -- almost all men -- have been sleeping in the open.
"It's out of control," Lampedusa mayor Bernardino De Rubeis told reporters from the tiny island, which at just 110 kilometres (68 miles) from Tunisian shores is closer to North Africa than to Italy.
Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, said: "The Tunisian system is collapsing."
"I will ask Tunisia's foreign minister for authorisation for our forces to intervene in Tunisia to block the flux," he said in a television interview.
However Tunisian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abderraouf Ounaies, who was expected to visit Italy on Thursday, resigned abruptly on Sunday after just over two weeks in the job.
"I have asked for urgent intervention by the European Union because the Maghreb is exploding," Maroni said, referring to the North Africa region.
A spokesman said European Union home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem "is fully aware of the exceptional pressure on Italy" and was looking at ways to assist the Italian authorities.
The EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, is set to visit Tunisia on Monday. Her spokesman said the flood of immigrants was a side-issue to the original purpose of the visit, which was to nurture democratic reforms.
Italy has begun airlifting and shipping many of the immigrants from Lampedusa to detention centres in Sicily and on mainland Italy, but police estimate that more than 2,000 of them remain on the island.
"The situation is very difficult," the harbour master, Antonio Morana, told reporters. He said 977 people had landed so far on Sunday and more were coming.
Italy's cabinet on Saturday declared a humanitarian emergency in the area.
A government statement said that the decision to call an official emergency would enable civil protection officers "to take immediate action needed to control this phenomenon and assist citizens who have fled from North Africa."
In comments to the Corriere della Sera daily on Sunday, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: "We have to mobilise Mediterranean countries that have boats, planes and helicopters" to patrol the Tunisian coastline.
Frattini and Maroni appealed for immediate assistance from the European Union's Warsaw-based border security agency, Frontex.
Maroni said that immigrants were fleeing poverty but that there were also escaped convicts and "figures from terrorist organisations" among them.
A young Tunisian migrant, meanwhile, drowned and another was reported missing when a boat carrying 12 people sank on Saturday off southeast Tunisia en route to Europe, the official Tunisian TAP agency said.
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