Roundup: British base in Cyprus preparing for migrants deportation

British authorities have set in motion the process of deporting over 100 migrants, mostly Syrians and Lebanese, who arrived at a British base in Cyprus three weeks ago, a Cypriot official said on Monday.

The official, who spoke to Xinhua on condition of anonymity, said Cypriot authorities are aware of a letter the authorities of the British Sovereign Areas in Cyprus (SBA) communicated to the migrants over the weekend.

The migrants, 114 of them, came ashore in the British RAF base at Akrotiri after the two boats by which they were trying to reach Greece run out of fuel and drifted to the southern shores of Cyprus.

They were since taken to a facility at the second British base in Cyprus at Dhekelia for processing by the Cypriot authorities, under a 2003 agreement between Britain and Cyprus.

Some of the migrants have asked for political asylum in Cyprus but most of them said they want to go to Britain, Greece or Germany.

"We have said that those migrants who do not claim asylum could face removal to their place of origin. We have now formally notified the migrants who have not claimed asylum that we do intend to remove them," bases spokeswoman Connie Pierce was quoted as saying to the English language daily Cyprus Mail on Monday.

She further was quoted as saying that the base authorities "have been clear with the migrants on the options open to them and they have also had advice from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees."

"The UK government will not allow a new migrant route to open to the UK," she said echoing a statement by the British government in London.

But migrants warned back that they will fight "tooth and nail" against any attempt to be sent back to Lebanon.

Ibrahim Marouf, a migrant of Palestinian origin who grew up in Lebanon, said they will resist any attempt to move them.

"We are going to fight this decision. We are not going to Lebanon. Let them do it by force. We thought England would see us as humans not as Muslims or Arabs," he said.

The migrants at Dhekelia are 67 men, 19 woman and 28 children.

The British defense ministry had originally claimed that the migrants were the responsibility of the Cypriot government as part of the 2003 agreement.

But the United Nations High Commission for Refugees stated that the agreement stipulates that the refugees are in fact Britain's responsibility but that they would be granted access to services in the Republic of Cyprus at cost to the British government.

Omiros Mavrommatis, head of the Cypriot foreign ministry's crisis management center, has stated that was the intention of Cyprus, "even though it is not an obligation to house the asylum seekers."

Cyprus has been apportioned by the European Commission less than 300 migrants as part of a plan to relocate 50,000 people. Endit