- Tens of migrants filmed landing on beach in Agrigento, Sicily in broad daylight
- Around 3,000 men from Tunisia have arrived tourist beauty spots since June
- Many seen discarding their clothes and getting changed before ‘disappearing’
Fresh footage has emerged showing African migrants landing on a beach in broad daylight as stunned tourists look on.
In the latest video, this time recorded in the beauty spot of Agrigento in Sicily, dozens can be seen clambering out of a small vessel and running up the beach before disappearing.
An onlooker described the scene as like a ‘D-Day style landing’ or a military exercise.
But in reality they were just some of the estimated 3,000 men who have sailed from Tunisia to Europe in the past two months in search of a better life.
Fresh footage has emerged showing more African migrants arriving on tourist beaches as stunned holidaymakers look on
It is the latest in a series of clips captured across the Mediterranean this summer which show migrants arriving on beaches in the middle of the day.
In this video, the figures can be seen fleeing the small vessel after an estimated 125-mile trip before running up the beach and disappearing into the woods.
Claudio Lombardo, the head of the Mareamico environmental group captured the moment on Wednesday morning.
He said: ‘In the past these boats came at night. When they came at night, all you saw was the abandoned boat on the beach the next day and the people were nowhere to be found, and that’s why we called them ghost boats.’
The latest video, recorded in Agrigento, Sicily on Wednesday, shows migrants abandoning a small vessel before paddling through shallow waters and running up the beach
Scenes like this have become increasingly common with summer with the beaches on Italy’s southern islands becoming a preferred landing spot for those coming from North Africa.
People smugglers have changed their tactic, sending migrants over in the middle of the day instead of the night in a bid to miss officials.
As departures from Libyan slowed up, boats from neighbouring Tunisia have picked up with their main route landing on secluded – but touristy – Sicilian beaches while tourists are out sunbathing.
A police source said some 3,000 migrants, mostly men, have come from the North Africa country in the past two months, with between 1,500 – 1,800 landing on the south coast of Sicily.
The rest have managed to land on the smaller islands of Lampedusa or Linosa.
The island has already had an influx of 10,000 migrants from Libya in the last two months.
Scenes like this have become increasingly common with summer with the beaches on Italy’s southern islands becoming a preferred landing spot for those coming from North Africa
Those who reached the smaller islands have almost all been identified by police, while between 20 to 40 percent of those who made it to Sicily vanished without trace, the official said.
Almost all are Tunisians, and some had already been expelled from Italy in the past, the investigator said
The 50 filmed by Lombardo were captured climbing up into the dry hills beyond the beach and headed inland, discarding T-shirts and shoes.
‘They have a kit with them, which is a bag with a change of clothes, and bottles of water and milk,’ Lombardo said. ‘Within 30 minutes, they disappear. They’re gone.’
Police pick up many found walking along roads, the investigator said. On Thursday, one young Tunisian man was killed by a car in a hit-and-run near Agrigento.
While some of the boats are big enough to make the more than 125-mile crossing from Tunisia, some are very small, raising questions about how they got there.
‘We have not excluded the existence of mother ships,’ the investigator said, referring to large fishing boats used in the past to ferry migrants close to the coast before putting them onto smaller boats for the last leg of the voyage.’