LINOSA, Italy (AFP) – African refugees fleeing Libya landed on a remote Italian island on Monday after epic Mediterranean boat journeys that are bringing hundreds to Italy's shores, like Fartun from Somalia.
"We finished water, we finished fuel. There were children on board. It was very difficult," said Fartun, who used to be a journalist in Somalia and arrived on board an overcrowded boat crammed with some 200 other people.
"I was working as a cleaner in a house. But the owner said: 'Get out of my house. You are African,'" she said, adding that she first arrived in Libya three years ago but was imprisoned for a year as an illegal immigrant.
Fartun was on one of three boats crammed with Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis rescued by Italian coast guard vessels on Sunday and brought to the tiny outcrop of Linosa -- an island with a population of just 300 people.
A fourth boat carrying 262 people arrived on the island on Monday.
"There were six pregnant women on board who have had to be taken to hospital by helicopter. One is in her ninth month of pregnancy, another is having a miscarriage," said Francesca Limuli, a doctor assisting rescue operations.
"We've fed them. We've cleaned them up. There are about 20 children. The women of Linosa have been busy cleaning them and changing them," she said.
"This is a glaring problem. I'm on my own here," she added.
Some of the migrants have already been ferried to refugee centres in other parts of Italy and others are expected to depart later on Monday.
"The situation is dramatic here," said Claudia Rossetti, 39, a coast guard volunteer and resident of Linosa.
"The situation is difficult because we don't have structures to house them."
Refugees have been housed temporarily by islanders on the floor in a church hall, a school building and a ferry ticket office, she said.
Local volunteers handed out food for the refugees -- many of them women in headscarves -- and could be seen playing with the children.
"Apart from five police officers there is no-one else to handle the situation. The whole of the population has activated itself. We are bringing them clothes and shoes," Rossetti said.
"We haven't received any type of assistance," she added.
Don Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean Catholic priest who has been in touch with the African refugees on the boats via satellite phone and liaises with Italy's coast guard, said he was concerned over the fate of another vessel on its way.
"I haven't had any news from yesterday evening. I am very worried. The phone is ringing but no-one answers it," Zerai said.
He said the vessel -- a rubber boat -- had around 68 people on board and was last in contact some 60 miles (95 kilometres) off the Libyan coast.
Italy and Libya signed a treaty in 2008 which Italian authorities say led to a 94-percent decrease in illegal immigration to Italy but was heavily criticised by human rights groups for the treatment of migrants.
The Italian government has suspended the treaty and warns it now fears hundreds of thousands of migrants could depart for Italy if Kadhafi's regime falls. Italy has requested increased assistance from the European Union.
Kadhafi himself has threatened to send "millions" of migrants to Europe.
More than 18,000 mostly Tunisian migrants have arrived on Lampedusa -- along with Linosa part of the Pelagian Islands archipelago -- so far this year and hundreds more are arriving every day.
Only 27 migrants arrived on Lampedusa over the same period last year.
The Pelagian Islands are closer to North Africa than to mainland Italy.
