ATHENS, March 25 (AFP) - 13h36 - Port authorities have discovered two Kurdish stowaways
 who had been hiding in a container, the Greek ministry for the merchant navy said Sunday.

 After hearing noises from inside the authorities opened the container on a storage site in the
 port of Piraeus. One of the immigrants was so exhausted he was taken immediately to hospital.

 The container had been deposited there a week before by the Maltese ship Mediterranean
 Hopp, the ministry said.

 It was not yet possible to say whether the Kurds hid themselves in the container in Piraeus or
 whether they had actually been on board the ship before the container was unloaded, the
 ministry said, adding that an investigation had been opened.

 Elsewhere, authorities on the island of Chios in the Aegean arrested four Afghans on a small
 boat which had come from the nearby Turkish mainland.

 In the last few months the number of illegal Afghan immigrants arriving in Greece and asking for
 political asylum has increased. Almost 450 were arrested in 2000 across the country,
 according to the Athens office for the High Commissioner for Refugees.

 This comes at the end of a week when Bulgarian border officials arrested 36 illegal immigrants
 trying to enter the EU member state.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com