More than 300 mostly Syrian refugees rescued by a cruise liner on Thursday refused to disembark in Cyprus's southern port of Limassol and are demanding instead to be taken to Italy, the cruise company has said.
"We were supposed to sail at 10.30 tonight, unfortunately these people want to negotiate," Kikis Vassiliou, managing director of Salamis Cruise Lines, told reporters. "They want us to send them to Italy."
The liner rescued the people from rough seas off Cyprus earlier today.
The refugees, mostly women and children, were loaded aboard the Salamis Filoxenia cruise liner and were in "good health", according to George Ppouro, the harbour master in the Cypriot port of Limassol.
The liner had been en route from the Greek island of Syros to Limassol when it received a call to assist in the rescue operation.
The trawler sent out a distress signal at 6.25am local time when it was about 50 miles southwest of the tourist hub of Paphos, the Cypriot government said.
"On board the ship are about 300 people that require recovery and rescue because of bad weather conditions in the area," the defence ministry said after the operation was launched.
The Mediterranean has been plagued by shipwrecks in recent months involving migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa and the Middle East.
In one of the deadliest wrecks on record, a ship carrying about 500 migrants, including Syrians, Palestinians and Egyptians, was deliberately sunk by traffickers off Malta earlier this month, leaving just ten known survivors.
