Boats carrying hundred of migrants arrive in Italy’s Lampedusa

Seven boats packed with hundreds of migrants arrived on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Sunday, and officials said more people were expected as the weather improved.

More than 1,000 people got off the vessels at Lampedusa, one of the main landing points for people trying to get across the Mediterranean into Europe, ANSA news agency said.

“Migrants arrivals are resuming alongside good weather,” Lampedusa’s mayor Toto Martello told state broadcaster RAI. “We need to restart discussions about the immigration issue.”

Numbers in recent years have been down from 2015-2017, when Europe took in hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of them fleeing poverty and conflict across Africa and the Middle East.

But the issue still sharply divides European governments and has fuelled anti-immigration sentiment and parties across the continent.

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League party, called on Prime Minister Mario Draghi to tackle the issue.

“With millions of Italians facing difficulties, we cannot care for thousands of illegal migrants,” he wrote on Twitter.

Some of the boats were intercepted off the coast of the Mediterranean island by the Italian tax police, who deal with financial crime and smuggling, ANSA said.

About 400 migrants of various nationalities got off one of the boats, a drifting fishing vessel, the agency reported.

Another boat carrying 325 people was intercepted eight miles off Lampedusa, the agency added.