Robert Besser
15 Mar 2023, 22:38 GMT+10
ROME, Italy: Tommaso Foti, the lower parliamentary house whip for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right party, the Brothers of Italy Party, has said that Italian intelligence reports showed that some 700,000 migrants are in Libya waiting to set out by sea towards Italy.
However, Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for the United Nations International Organization for Migration, said that number is not accurate.
In an interview with television channel Tgcom24, Foti said that the Italian secret services estimated that 685,000 migrants in Libya, with many being held in detention camps and keen to sail across the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers' boats.
In a meeting later this month, Meloni is hoping for more support from other leaders of European Union member states in managing the large numbers of migrants and asylum-seekers crossing the Mediterranean to European countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and Italy.
"Europe cannot look the other way, Foti said, as reported by the Associated Press.
In response, Di Giacomo told The Associated Press in Rome that the figure given by Italy was confusing the high end of the estimated total number of migrants in Libya with those who were actually planning to travel to Europe.
"This number seems to be an estimate, that we also give the total presence in Libya. The Italian intelligence service's estimate is the last of a long series of alarms that we have seen in the last 10, 12 years, that turned out to be mistaken," he said.
In 2022, some 105,000 migrants reached Italy by sea, and from the start of this year through 10th March, some 17,600 arrived, including a few thousand who disembarked at Italian ports over the past several days.
Italy has, for many years, unsuccessfully encouraged Libya to prevent smugglers from sending migrants on unseaworthy fishing boats and rubber dinghies toward the Italian coastline.
However, the smuggling gangs that traffic migrants continue to operate due to Libyan political instability.
Get a daily dose of Shanghai Sun news through our daily email, its complimentary and keeps you fully up to date with world and business news as well.
Publish news of your business, community or sports group, personnel appointments, major event and more by submitting a news release to Shanghai Sun.
More InformationMOSCOW, Russia: A new campaign has begun across Russia to attract badly needed recruits to replenish its troop numbers for ...
WASHINGTON D.C.: US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said that lawmakers will move forward on legislation aimed at ...
CROWNPOINT, New Mexico: Navajo Technical University, located on the largest Native American reservation in the US, has become the first ...
WEST READING, Pennsylvania: An explosion occurred at a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania, killing seven people and seeing ten staff members ...
OTTAWA, Canada: US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have announced a plan to close a loophole ...
UVLADE, Texas: Texas police stopped a Florida-bound freight train this week and discovered two migrants had died in a freight ...
Islamabad [Pakistan], March 29 (ANI): Pakistan's political turmoil has delivered more twists this week as key provincial elections were postponed ...
Islamabad [Pakistan], March 29 (ANI): Pakistan is in a fix as it has entered into a vicious cycle of borrowing ...
New Delhi [India], March 28 (ANI): The second day of the 2nd Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group (ECSWG) meeting ...
Beijing [China], March 28 (ANI): Xi Jinping said it is important to promote defence modernisation and build the military into ...
© Provided by Xinhua BOAO, Hainan, March 28 (Xinhua) -- The weighted real GDP growth rate of Asia in 2023 ...
Guwahati (Assam) [India], March 27 (ANI): Assam Governor Gulab Chand Kataria on Monday took stock of the implementation of different ...