Rome - Italian law enforcement has busted an international migrant smuggling ring that trafficked hundreds from Italy into France, police said on Monday.
Eighteen people were arrested in Italy and international arrest warrants were issued for another 16 suspects, police said in a statement.
Migrants and asylum seekers paid traffickers between $1 000 (about R13 000) and $5 000 dollars each to get packed into wooden crates loaded on trucks, or hidden in car trunks, before being smuggled across the French border at the city of Ventimiglia.
The migrants were mostly Syrian, but there were also Egyptian, Eritrean, and Sudanese nationals, according to police.
The Milan-based ring – which police described as "a vast and ramified criminal association" – was headed by Egyptian nationals and made up of Albanians, Afghans, Egyptians, Italians, Romanians and Sudanese.
"After an investigation lasting almost two years, the flying squad arrests the members of a human trafficking gang," State Police tweeted.
This bust represents but "a drop in the sea" of unscrupulous people preying on migrants who "leave their homelands for reasons of war and embark on journeys of suffering lasting months and sometimes years," Milan prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told reporters at a press conference.
"We must try to imagine the enormous sacrifices these sums represent for the families of those willing to undertake such journeys," Boccassini said.