CAIRO: Italy security forces arrested Monday seven Egyptian alleged smugglers on board of a fishing boat with 134 migrants, DPA reported.
The boat was seized last week by Croatian military ship in the Mediterranean Sea; it has been escorted to Sicily where the Egyptians, aged between 20 and 50 years old, were held in custody for the investigations, the Agency reported the Italy’s news agency ANSA.
In July, A Syrian girl with diabetes died after three Egyptian smugglers threw her package with insulin into the sea; the girl is one of 335 migrants on board of the boat arrested by the Italian forces in Augusta city of Sicily, AP reported.
Hundred of thousands of Middle East and African asylum seekers, mostly from Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, illegally travel from the Egyptian northern coastal cities to Italy and Greece, eyeing European countries.
An Egyptian rescue team recovered 10 corpses of Syrian and Iraqi migrants from sea in Burullus village in Delta’s governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh this week.
In May, five bodies recovered and 20 arrested in Kafr el-Sheikh while attempting to travel to Italy.