More than 700 migrants arrived in the port of the Italian island of Lampedusa last night. 686 of them were on board a fishing boat, another 70 migrants were on four smaller boats.
The migrants are undergoing a ‘health check’ on Lampedusa, from tomorrow they will probably be quarantined because of the corona virus. According to Italian, the large fishing boat left from Libya.
Authorities fear more migrants will follow. The mayor of Lampedusa says in Italian media that after a few days of bad weather, boats are now arriving again, because the sea is calm.
Libyan camps
The last time a large ship arrived at Lampedusa was at the end of August. Then 538 migrants reached the island. These would all have been people who were mistreated in Libyan camps. It is being investigated whether this also applies to the people who have now arrived.
The large ships that dock in Italy mostly come from western Libya, from where the crossing to Lampedusa is the shortest. Since last summer, human traffickers have also been using a different route, with the border area with Egypt as the starting point.
“There is no doubt that we are faced with a changing strategy of human traffickers, which must be monitored,” the mayor of Lampedusa told Italian media. He asks for more support from the Italian government and from the European Union.
More migrants than last year
According to figures from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, 44,778 migrants have arrived in Italy by boat since January, compared to 27,517 people in the same period in 2020 – when fewer people made the crossing due to the corona outbreak.
11,000 people have died in the crossing, twice as many as last year.
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