Refugees rescued at sea agree to go ashore

Hundreds of mostly Syrian refugees rescued by a cruise liner in the Mediterranean have disembarked in Cyprus after hours of refusing to budge and demanding to go to Italy.

The Cypriot Defense Ministry said the refugees's boat had "most likely" set sail from Syria loaded with "civilian refugees."

"We were supposed to sail at 10:30 tonight, unfortunately these people want to negotiate," Kikis Vassiliou, managing director of Salamis Cruise Lines, which owns the ship that rescured the migrants, said on Thursday. "They want us to send them to Italy."

A small group did disembark from the the Salamis Philoxenia to negotiate with authorities, Vasiliou said. Talks broke off, and the group returned to the ship.

Several adults holding small children were seen leaving the cruise ship, while one man led away by police in handcuffs.

A man later came on the cruise ship's public address system to urge the group to disembark through an Arabic-speaking interpreter by telling them that authorities would do all they can to send those who met the criteria to other European countries.

The 65 refugees who willingly left the ship were bussed to the Kokkinotrimithia camp not far from Nicosia. Doctors, nurses, civil defense and Red Cross workers remained on hand as the negotiations continued into Friday.

The others refused to budge, the shipping company said. Negotiations continued through the night until authorities managed to convince the rest to disembark Friday morning.

Meanwhile, 300 Russian passengers, who had been due to continue their cruise to Haifa, Israel, had their journey cancelled and were put up in Limmasol hotels.

The episode began when people packed aboard a small vessel issued a distress call early Thursday amid rough seas and high winds some 50 nautical miles off Cyprus. 

Vasiliou said his company received the request from Cypriot Search and Rescue authorities to assist in the rescue operation Thursday morning while the cruise ship was returning to Cyprus from the Greek islands.

One paying passenger said a refugee had told her they had sailed from Syria and been at sea for three days and that their skipper had abandoned them.

"The captain of their boat made a phone call and a speed boat came and took the captain," said Chrystalla Eflatsoumis, 66. She said “many pregnant women and 20 babies” were among the refugees.

Syrians now constitute the world's largest refugee population under the care of the U.N. high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), second only to refugees in the decades-old Palestinian crisis, which falls under the mandate of a separate U.N. agency, according to a UNHCR report.

The vast majority of Syrian refugees are in neighboring countries, with the most in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, the office of the UNHCR said. Other refugees are in Iraq, with the rest in Egypt and other countries.

But some, like other migrants fleeing conflicts in the region have attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of safe havens in Europe. The UNHCR says more than 2,500 people have drowned or been reported lost at sea this year trying to cross the Mediterranean.

Al Jazeera and wire services