A boat carrying 175 Syrian refugees arrived Friday off northwest Cyprus near the coastal resort of Paphos and the migrants were safely brought to shore, police said Friday.

They said the vessel with 81 men, 59 children and 35 women on board had travelled from Turkey. The migrants received medical checks and food, and they were to be moved to a reception centre near Nicosia.

In September, in one of the largest waves of migrants to reach Cyprus, 305 Syrian migrants were rescued from two boats.

Cyprus, an EU member state located 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Syria’s Mediterranean coast, has not seen the massive inflow of migration experienced by Turkey and Greece.

But Nicosia has raised the alarm, calling on the European Union to act as it receives more and more asylum seekers.

EU data shows that Cyprus ranks fourth among the bloc’s 28 nations in the number of asylum applications per capita.

Since September 2014, over a dozen migrant boats have reached the island, bringing in around 1,700 migrants including the latest arrivals.

source: AFP