NICOSIA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A total of 87 irregular immigrants, including 10 women and 16 children, arrived in Cyprus on Monday in a small wooden boat, police said in a statement.

It was the second boatload of Syrian immigrants arriving in Cyprus so far this year, following the rescue of 121 immigrants from a drifting boat on Jan.14.

The police statement said that the boat was spotted 20 nautical miles off the Cape Greco and was escorted by a police patrol boat into the port of Larnaca.

Police sources said the boat had probably sailed from the Turkish port of Mersin, the same port of departure as the previous boat.

The immigrants said they came from Syria and that they paid an unspecified amount of money to human traffickers to bring them to Cyprus, a favorite place for Syrian refugees, where thousands of their compatriots live.

The immigrants were processed at Larnaca and were then transferred to a refugee center near the capital Nicosia.

Shortly before the arrival of the boat, police said they found a group of five irregular Syrian immigrants on a country road trying to reach on foot the nearest inhabited area.

Cypriot Interior Minister Nikos Nouris told a parliamentary committee recently that asylum seekers in Cyprus have accounted for 3.8 percent of the island's population, the highest among European Union member states. Enditem

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