NICOSIA: Cypriot authorities said on Tuesday they had towed a boat carrying 38 Syrian refugees to shore after it was found in the Mediterranean off the northwest coast of the island.

Police said the 33 men, four children and one woman on board were safely brought to land in the early hours of Tuesday after setting sail from Turkey.

The new arrivals told police they had waited for days to board a boat on the Turkish coast to be smuggled to Cyprus at a cost of $2,000 each.

All received medical checks and food while police took down their personal details. They are expected to be moved to a reception centre outside the capital Nicosia.

In recent months there has been a steady trickle of Syrian migrants arriving in the same area of Cyprus from Turkey, with 305 people in two boats rescued in September. Cyprus, a European Union member state located 160 kilometres from Syria’s Mediterranean coast, has not seen the massive inflow of migrants experienced by Turkey and Greece.

Nonetheless, Nicosia has raised alarm bells telling Brussels than that the EU needs to act as it receives more and more asylum seekers.

Greece protest

Residents and officials from three eastern Aegean Greek islands have demonstrated outside Greece’s ministry for migration, protesting the increasingly precarious and overcrowded conditions for newly arriving migrants and refugees.

The mayors of Lesbos, Chios and Samos, along with dozens of locals, travelled to the mainland to protest outside the ministry on Tuesday, demanding the government take measures to reduce overcrowding.

Under a European Union-Turkey deal reached last year to reduce the migratory flow, those arriving on Greek islands from the Turkish coast are held in camps on the islands and face deportation back to Turkey unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.

The lengthy process has led to severe overcrowding. On Lesbos, for example, more than 6,500 people are stuck in facilities with a capacity of just over 2,300.

Separately, German police on Tuesday arrested an Afghan citizen on suspicion of smuggling migrants by sea from Turkey to Greece resulting in the death of several dozen people when the boat sank, federal police and prosecutors said.

Agencies