ROME, June 3: Italian officials said on Sunday they had detained over 300 people seeking to enter the country illegally in boats over the weekend.

The largest single influx was a group of 199 people from Eritrea and Somalia, whose leaky boat was escorted to safety by an Italian navy ship after being spotted off Italy’s southeastern coast.

A woman and two children from the group — which contained 51 women and 29 children in all — were in a weak state and were hospitalized, officials said.

The others were assembled in a local sports centre before being taken to a holding centre.

Overnight on Saturday, another 50 illegal immigrants, believed to be Iraqi Kurds, were picked up by police from the southeastern town of Lecce.

That group had arrived in an inflatable boat and had broken into smaller groups in order to make their get away on shore when they were arrested.

They were taken by authorities to a detention centre in Otrante.

And on Saturday 58 others, including Pakistanis, Sudanese, Iraqis and Tunisians, were arrested by police on the island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily.

The arrival of the Somalis and Eritreans caused some surprise on Sunday, as those nationalities do not usually figure prominently in the mix of people trying to get into Italy. —AFP