500 Kurdish refugees arrive by boat off southern Italy

A boat with several hundred refugees on board reached southern Italy's Adriatic coast on Thursday, Italian teletext reported.

It said the vessel, which had come from Turkey, was reported to be carrying 500 people, most of whom were Kurds.

The report, timed at 1300 gmt, said the boat was being escorted to the southeastern port of Otranto by Italian coastguards and was expected to dock shortly.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.