ROME: Italy on Friday warned of a looming “humanitarian emergency” as coast guards intercepted six boats carrying hundreds of immigrants from Tunisia after the revolution there. “There is a risk of a real humanitarian emergency,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said. The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia are leading to a “mass flight” to Italian shores by undocumented immigrants, Maroni said. A spokesman for the coast guard service in Lampedusa, a tiny island located between Sicily and Tunisia's shores, said that a total of 641 undocumented immigrants had been intercepted by coast guards since late Thursday. “They all said they were from Tunisia,” the spokesman said. The latest boat, carrying 181 people including 16 minors, was found early Friday in Italian waters and taken to Lampedusa by coast guards. They will undergo health checks and will then be taken to immigrant detention centers ahead of eventual repatriation, he added. Maroni Wednesday warned about the risk of “terrorist infiltrations by Tunisians who want to come to Europe disguised as political refugees.” Maroni said Italy needed European help and had made a request for the EU's justice and home affairs council later this month to discuss “the crisis in North Africa and its effects on immigration and internal security in Europe.” The next justice and home affairs council meeting is set for Feb. 24-25. ANSA news agency also quoted officials at the Sicilian port of Trapani saying that coast guards had rescued nine Tunisian immigrants from a sinking boat Friday near the island of Favignana. About 1,000 would-be migrants have arrived over the past three days in Lampedusa, an island closer to Africa than the Italian mainland. Their high numbers have been an anomaly, given the general reduced flow of illegal immigrants that have resulted from Italy's policy of returning would-be migrants without screening them first for asylum. Italy also has agreements with Libya and other north African countries to stem the tide on their end.
