Over the past 24 hours, more than 5 thousand illegal migrants have arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa; a critical situation has developed at the local refugee reception center.
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According to officials, on Tuesday, about 110 different vessels arrived on the shores of this island in the Mediterranean Sea, bringing 5,112 people to Italian territory. This is an absolute record. The previous peak in the arrival of migrants to Lampedusa was recorded on August 29, when 2,172 refugees landed on the island in one day.
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However, even after midnight the flow of migrants did not stop. On Wednesday morning, about a thousand more refugees from African and Asian countries arrived in Lampedusa. According to the Italian Red Cross (CRI), there are currently more than 6 thousand refugees on the island, including many families with minor children. Most of them have already been taken to the local migrant detention center, which, however, is designed to accommodate only 400 people.
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“We are receiving people, paying special attention to the most vulnerable people, but it is obvious that the process of moving people from the island, which has so far allowed us to keep the situation under control, must continue. It is important, also from a humanitarian point of view, that the center the critical presence threshold has not been exceeded for the reception of migrants,” CRI reported in this regard.
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Italian authorities are taking emergency measures to move people arriving on the island to other places. Thus, about 700 migrants are planned to be transported to the Sicilian city of Porto Empedocle on Wednesday, and another 180 people will be taken from the island by plane.
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Rome is seeking from the European Union a solidarity approach to solving the migration problem. However, in recent days, France and Germany have made it clear that they can no longer cooperate with Italy in accepting illegal migrants and intend to close their borders to them.
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According to the latest data from the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs, more than 116 thousand migrants have already arrived in the country by sea since January 1. In 2022, for the same period of time, this figure was 63.5 thousand people. More than two thousand refugees have died trying to reach Italy this year.
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In April, the Italian government declared a six-month state of emergency throughout the national territory “due to an exceptional increase in the flow of migrants arriving in the country along Mediterranean routes.”
