Almost 800 illegal immigrants land in Italy

Almost 800 illegal immigrants arrived in southern Italy aboard just three boats yesterday, in one of the largest daily influxes of third world refugees that Italy has seen.

Port officials said 478 migrants crammed on a 25-metre-long boat landed on the island of Lampedusa overnight - the biggest number to arrive there on a single vessel.

Authorities had originally put the number at 484 people but later revised down the total. It was not immediately clear where the group came from.

A further 169 immigrants reached Lampedusa after daybreak while a boat carrying 130 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia came ashore in Sicily, a naval spokesman in Palermo said.

Officials said Lampedusa's reception centre for immigrants was swamped after a flood of recent landings, with some 900 people crammed into a compound designed to house just 190.

The tiny tourist island lies some 200 km southwest of Sicily and just over 100 km north of Tunisia and has become one of the main gateways for impoverished migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Many of the new arrivals claim to be political refugees but Italy says they are mostly economic refugees and has in 2002 introduced legislation making it easier to expel the migrants.

However, many manage to avoid deportation and are rapidly absorbed into Europe's army of illegal workers.

Italian police said half of a group of 200 immigrants who were transferred to Sicily on Saturday from Lampedusa were immediately released because there was nowhere to house them.

Immigration control is a hot political issue in Italy and some of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right allies want tough new action to halt the tide.

Italy believes many illegal immigrants set sail from Libya and Mr Berlusconi met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi last month to discuss ways of stemming the flow.

Rome has struck one such deal with neighbouring Albania, helping the local navy to patrol national waters and putting a virtual halt to human trafficking across the Adriatic sea.

Italy's European Affairs Minister, Rocco Buttiglione, who will take charge of EU immigration policy as justice and home affairs commissioner later this year, wants camps set up outside EU borders to screen migrants before allowing them to enter.