CATANIA (Sicily) March 18: A ship crammed with around 1,000 mainly Kurdish illegal immigrants, including hundreds of women and children, reached the Sicilian port of Catania on Monday, with medical teams on stand-by to help them.

Health and safety officials said they feared many on board the 80-metre vessel, after up to a week at sea in hot, cramped and unhygienic conditions, were severely ill.

“There are around 1,000 people on board, among them 300 children and 200 women,” Captain Sebastiano Scandura of Italy’s Guardia di Finanza coastguard police told Reuters via mobile phone from aboard the merchant ship Monica, believed to be registered in the south Pacific kingdom of Tonga.

“They are very tired and the hygiene-sanitation conditions are very precarious — some definitely need medical attention.”

One of the immigrants told reporters at the quayside that they were Iraqi Kurds. Italian authorities said the group would be let off the ship as soon as possible and eventually taken to a reception centre on mainland Italy.

The Italian Navy intercepted the ship in the eastern Mediterranean on Sunday night and attempted to board it, but the immigrants, fearing arrest, threatened to throw children overboard if they could not continue the voyage.

After a tense stand-off, naval officials persuaded those on board to allow them to escort the ship 70 miles to port.

A 21-year-old woman was flown off the vessel by helicopter during the night after giving birth to a 3-1/2 kg baby girl who nurses said was doing well. The woman’s husband and two other children are still on board the ship.

If the number on board is confirmed, it would be one of the biggest arrivals of illegal immigrants in Italy in many months.—Reuters