250 rescued from sinking trawler

By Jean Christou

OVER 250 Iraqi immigrants, mostly women and children, were rescued from a sinking trawler off Paphos yesterday afternoon, police said.

As tourists at the luxury Coral Beach hotel only 100 metres away on the shore, watched in horror, the immigrants screamed for help and threw themselves from the sinking vessel.

Police said the 250 Iraqis had been abandoned by the captain of the boat, believed to be Syrian, two days into the journey, apparently deliberately. They said indications were that it had sailed from Lebanon nine days ago on its way to Italy. The immigrants had paid around $4,000 each for the trip, they said.

Two police launches and a helicopter spent most of the afternoon rescuing the trawler’s occupants. Women and children were removed first but by the time that part of the operation was completed, the men who had been on board were already in the water clinging to life rafts as the ship lay on its side.

It took some four hours to get everyone to shore, police said. Four or five people were taken to Paphos hospital suffering from hypothermia but were later released. Others were treated on the beach after doctors were called to the scene.

Paphos police chief Spyros Koiniotis said that at around 3.30pm the boat drifted close to the shore after springing a leak. "Some people fell in the sea and tried to get back on but the others wouldn’t let them when they saw the water was going in," he said. "We managed to transfer all the women and children to another boat."

Witnesses on the beach told a local television station it appeared the boat’s occupants had not had food or water for several days. One said the tourists who had watched the drama made a collection and brought food from a nearby supermarket to feed them.

A Paphos police spokesman said late last night that all the immigrants had been rounded up and were on the beach near the hotel. He said the authorities were trying to see where they could be housed for the night. "We don’t know yet where they are going to stay or what will happen to them afterwards," he said.

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