The Italian authorities are transferring to Sicily and the mainland thousands of people who arrived this week by sea on this Mediterranean island close to the North African coast.
Located less than 150 km from the Tunisian coast, Lampedusa is one of the first ports of call for migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean hoping to reach Europe. Every year during the summer, tens of thousands of them take to the sea on often dilapidated boats to attempt this perilous crossing, more than 2,000 of them have already died since January.
However, the situation has never been so tense in Lampedusa, where 10,000 people arrived between Monday and Wednesday, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, more than the population of the island, saturating the reception centre run by the Red Cross, which has a capacity of 400 places.
The Italian authorities have mobilised major resources to transfer people to Sicily or mainland ports, including a Navy patrol boat and ferries.
Long queues of men, women and children formed on Friday morning to board buses and vans bound for the island’s port, where they were due to embark.
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The Italian Red Cross (CRI) said on Friday morning that 700 transfers had already taken place and that a further 2,500 people were expected to leave the island later today.
At the same time, migrants were continuing to arrive on the island, either by their own means or rescued by the coastguard, an AFP photographer observed. Belga reports that migrant arrivals were (comparatively) down, but this week new records were set with reports of 5,000-6,000 arrivals in one day.
“Migrants are still arriving, but we are managing them,” Francesca Basile, Head of Migration at the CRI, said on Friday morning outside the reception centre.
France and Germany have since sealed their borders, which has provoked the ire of the Italian government.
