All of those on board the stricken vessel were safely brought ashore to Larnaca by 7:00 am (0400 GMT) on Sunday, police said.

An official statement said an overnight rescue operation was carried out after a cargo ship alerted the Cypriot Search and Rescue Center on Saturday night saying that it had received a signal from the drifting fishing boat seeking help.

Mr Hasikos has said it would be easier for Christians to integrate into society than Muslims or those of other faiths, given that around 72 per cent of Cypriots are Christians.

The refugees fled their homeland due to the lingering civil war and drifted 40 nautical miles (74 kilometers) off the shores of the eastern Mediterranean island.

Cyprus lies just 100 kilometres (60 miles) off the Syrian coast but has so far avoided a mass influx of refugees, with most preferring to bypass the island for the European mainland.

An European Union source said on Monday that the European Union executive had drawn up a new set of national quotas under which member states will take in a total of 160,000 asylum-seekers to be relocated from Italy, Greece and Hungary.

The three persons detained by the police are aged 47, 33 and 28, and one of them is the captain of the boat.

Police were unable to immediately confirm the report.

Cyprus police said they had arrested three people who had admitted to smuggling the refugees, of whom more than half were transferred to a reception camp outside Nicosia on Sunday.

Back in September, a cruise liner rescued about 345 Syrian and Palestinian refugees in waters off the island’s coast.

The world body estimates that 300,000 people have left the Middle East and Africa for Europe this year, but 2,600 have died while attempting the journey, the majority of them during unsafe voyages across the Mediterranean in rickety boats.

Two months later, about 220 Syrian refugees crammed onto a fishing boat were rescued off the coast of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus after hitting rough seas.