Italy relocates refugees after Lampedusa centre overwhelmed | Refugees News

Navy commences transferring the 1st of 600 migrants and refugees from Lampedusa amid a sharp uptick in new arrivals.

The Italian navy has began relocating hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers from the Sicilian island of Lampedusa just after its refugee identification centre became overcome with new arrivals.

The Italian Inside Ministry said on Saturday that the navy’s Marco ship was using an first 600 men and women from Lampedusa to yet another middle in Sicily and from there they were be distributed in other places in the place.

The ministry explained the transfers would continue on Sunday.

Inside Ministry figures clearly show a sustained uptick in day by day asylum seeker arrivals in July in Italy in contrast with modern many years.

In general, arrivals are up sharply this year, with 30,000 refugees making landfall so considerably in contrast to 22,700 in the identical period of time in 2021 and 7,500 in 2020.

Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than mainland Italy, is often the vacation spot of decision for Libyan-primarily based migrant smugglers, who charge determined people hundreds of dollars apiece to cross the Mediterranean Sea on packed, dangerous dinghies and boats.

Lampedusa’s previous mayor, Giusi Nicolini, posted what she explained ended up shots and videos taken in the middle in new days, displaying new arrivals sleeping on the ground on parts of foam and bogs piled high with plastic bottles and rubbish.

“There are 2,100 individuals packed in the Lampedusa welcome center,” which has beds for 200, she wrote on Fb. “These could be images from Libya, but no, it is Italy. And these are the types who survived.”

Ideal-wing legislators ended up brief to seize on the overcrowding, blaming the left-wing events in Italy’s authorities for getting as well soft on migration.

“And this would be the left’s popular humanitarian product?” Georgia Meloni of the far-suitable Brothers of Italy occasion, tweeted together with the visuals. “Saying no to mass illegal immigration also usually means expressing no to this.”