Boat carrying 124 refugees, including Kurds, lands on Corsican shores

Boat carrying 124 refugees lands on Corsica

AJACCIO, Corsica — More than 100 refugees who say they are Kurds and Tunisians landed Friday on the southern shore of Corsica after a lengthy journey at sea, officials said.

It was an unusual occurrence on this French Mediterranean island, a popular vacation destination that rarely sees arrivals of migrants.

The local gendarme service and the regional administration said there were 124 people in the group, including women and children, and described them as refugees. They were unloaded from a boat early Friday onto a beach in Bonifacio before the boat took off again.

Naval planes, gendarmes and customs officers were searching for the boat.

The refugees were being taken to a Bonifacio gymnasium. Some said they were Kurds who had arrived from Syria, while others said they were Tunisians, Corsica prefect Stephane Bouillon said. It was not immediately clear whether those said to be of Kurdish origin were from Iraq, Iran or Turkey.

“We must verify their stories,” Bouillon said on RTL radio, adding that the prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.