Patrol boat brings 19 migrants ashore

Nineteen irregular migrants were picked up from a drifting boat and brought ashore last night.

If last year is anything to go by, many will fear that they are only the first batch in what might turn out to be another spring/summer wave of migrant arrivals. Last year 1,400 irregular migrants landed in Malta, most of them in the warm season.

And this year they appear to have started coming in even earlier than in 2004, when on April 8, 28 illegal immigrants had reached the shore after being rescued by a US ship 25 miles off the Maltese coast, the first such rescue of the year.

The armed forces said yesterday's rescue was carried out after a message was received by an Italian fishing boat that a white, five-metre boat had been spotted some 50 miles south of Marsaxlokk with 19 migrants aboard. An Islander aircraft was sent to the area and later an AFM patrol boat, which took three hours to reach the spot where the boat was sighted. At about 7.20 p.m., the patrol boat spotted the irregular migrants' vessel 69 nautical miles south of Delimara Point and took the 19 migrants on board.

They are all men who claim to hail from Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Palestine. The migrants came ashore at the Maritime Squadron at Haywharf and will be detained at the police and army closed centres.

The operation was coordinated by the AFM's Rescue Co-Ordination Centre at Luqa Barracks.