We had a week of hell, say Kurds abandoned in hulk

More than 1,000 Kurdish refugees, including many small children and elderly people, have been rescued from a rusting ship which was deliberately grounded on the French Mediterranean coast.

More than 1,000 Kurdish refugees, including many small children and elderly people, have been rescued from a rusting ship which was deliberately grounded on the French Mediterranean coast.

Officials said the refugees, who had paid £1,500 each to be smuggled into western Europe, had endured eight days in "indescribable" conditions, packed like animals into the holds and on to the decks of the Cambodian-registered East Sea.

The Greek captain and crew are believed to have abandoned ship after pointing the bow towards the shore and leaving the engines full on.

The ship struck a sand bank and rocks about 20 yards from the shore, near the pretty harbour town of Boulouris, between Cannes and St Tropez. No one was injured but the health of the people on board was said by French rescue workers to be "deplorable".

The refugees - including three babies born since the ship loaded its clandestine human cargo in Turkey - were given food and medical assistance on board then removed to a nearby military base.

A political row was raging in France last night about how the authorities should treat the castaways, believed to be Iraqis and Turkish Kurds. Philippe Séguin, the centre-right mayoral candidate in the Paris municipal elections next month, called on the government to act generously and declare the ships' passengers to be refugees rather than "illegal immigrants". They were, he said, "victims rather than responsible for their plight".

Bruno Mégret, leader of the far-right National Movement, said the ship's passengers should be "sent home immediately" before the word got around that France was a country "wide open to invasion". Daniel Canepa, the Prefect (senior government official) of the Var, the département (county) where the ship came ashore, said the Kurds were technically illegal migrants but a decision would be made on their fate at the "highest government level".

The disturbing voyage of the East Sea will redouble anxiety in the European Union about the organised trafficking in refugees and asylum-seekers by criminal gangs. French officials said they believed that the ship had been bound for a remote Italian cove or beach - the normal EU entry-point for illegal migrants from the Balkans and the Middle East.

The ship may have lost its way, or turned towards France to avoid interception; the crew either panicked or made a cynical decision to run their vessel ashore. The Syrian owner of the vessel is being sought by the French authorities.

The alarm was raised around 3.30am yesterday when a group of Kurds from the ship managed to swim ashore. They knocked on the door of a house and said, in English: "Help. United Nations." By dawn, around 100 Kurds had managed to swim or wade ashore and had made a bonfire on the beach to keep themselves warm. Doctors and other aid workers were winched to the ship by helicopters. Food, medical supplies and milk for the small children were dropped on the deck. By early afternoon, all passengers had been removed from the ship and taken to an infantry base near Fréjus. Police said that there were around 1,200 refugees, including 300 children under 10 and many old people. One refugee told reporters, in broken English: "We paid $200 to get on the boat and $2,000 on board. They gave us very little water and almost no food. We were swindled. They made big promises and we ended up in a container."

Another man said: "We were kept in the cargo hold. We couldn't tell how long we were in there because it was dark. We were hungry. It was terrible, terrible. Now they say we are in France. We are very happy."

"Conditions on board were catastrophic," said Dr Jean-Philippe Duteurtre, one of the first rescue workers to reach the ship. "People were just piled up in the holds." Mr Canepa, the Var Prefect, in charge of the rescue operation, said: "They are all Kurds, perhaps from Iraq, perhaps from Turkey. Maybe both.

"According to our preliminary information, they have lived for eight days in conditions of indescribable squalor without anywhere to go to the toilet or to wash. This kind of trafficking is scandalous. We are doing all that we can to find the captain and crew."