Europe Braces for a Possible Migrant Influx

Europe Braces for a Possible Migrant Influx  "About 1,000 North African migrants traveling in a dozen boats reached the Italian island of Lampedusa early Monday, with other small craft headed there, testing the tiny island’s capacity to accommodate them even as Italy and the rest of Europe braced for a possibly far larger influx, news reports said.

Some boats made it all the way to the island, which is about halfway between Tunisia and Sicily, while others were intercepted by the coast guard and taken aboard. None appeared to have left Libya itself, but Italian officials have warned that the crisis in their former colony could generate an overwhelming flow.

“So far we have contained the impact well despite the very high number of migrants,” Cono Galipo, who runs the refugee holding center on Lampedusa, told Reuters. “Fortunately we had only 314 migrants at the center already, and therefore the numbers have stayed beneath what we consider a critical level.” The center was built to accommodate up to 850 people, but in recent years it has at times housed as many as 2,000, some of them forced to sleep outdoors under plastic sheeting."

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