WUNRN
What about the wives, children,
mothers, family, these men left behind in North Africa?
Migrants from North Africa arrive in the southern Italian
Hundreds
of refugees fleeing the political violence in North African arrived on the tiny
Italian
Coast guard officials say 10 fishing vessels arrived early Monday with close to
850 people on board. Another boat has been sighted in the waters off the island
and now that weather conditions have improved more are expected to follow.
The new arrivals are given medical assistance, a hot drink and warm clothes.
They are then identified and screened to see if they are asylum applicants
requesting refugee status or simply economic migrants looking for jobs.
Most of the recent arrivals are young men. But there are also young women
like Fatma, who arrived this week on one of the boats that made the crossing
from
She says she arrived from Djerba. She is happy to have made it to
Lampedusa officials say the island may be experiencing the beginning of a
massive exodus of people fleeing the violence in
Bernardino De Rubeis,
Lampedusa's mayor, says a commitment is needed from the European Union.
He says the EU talks about economic aid, but says it must also open the
doors of its territory, because the risk is that Lampedusa and