Migrants wait at the port to be transferred to the mainland, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italy, September 14, 2023.
"In the past 48 hours, around 7,000 people have arrived in Lampedusa, which has always welcomed them with open arms," mayor Filippo Mannino told Italy's RTL 102.5 radio.
"We stand ready to support Italy and this is what we are doing," a Commission spokesperson said.
Preliminary data from Spain, another country on the EU's southern flank, showed the number of migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands more than trebled to 2,891 people in the first two weeks of September.
Matteo Villa, a migration data analysis expert from the ISPI think tank in Milan, told Reuters migrant arrivals to Italy this year are close to the record registered in 2016, when more than 180,000 people came.
Persons:
Yara, Lampedusa, Filippo Mannino, Giorgia, Matteo Salvini, Meloni, Matteo Villa, Gavin Jones, Alvise Armellini, Federico Maccioni, Corina Pons, Keith Weir, Janet Lawrence
Organizations:
REUTERS, European Commission, European Union, RTL, Thomson
Locations:
Lampedusa, Italy, North Africa, Tunisia, Malta, Sicily, Europe, Italian, Budapest, Brussels, Spain, Senegal, Milan, Tunis, Rome, Madrid