Close to 1000 migrants have arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa after crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat, news agency ANSA reported.
Some 270 people in six vessels were brought to shore by the Italian coastguard early on Sunday. On Saturday, 718 people travelling in 27 boats had reached the small island, some 130 kilometres east of Tunisia.
According to ANSA, the migrants have travelled from Congo, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali and said to have departed from the Tunisian coastal towns of Sfax, Gabes and Mahdia.
The reception centre on Lampedusa, with facilities for 400 people, has been overcrowded for weeks and currently hosts more than 2000 migrants.
Italy plans to transfer hundreds of people to Sicily by ferry.
The new arrivals come after 41 migrants died in a shipwreck off Lampedusa last week.
More than 96,300 people have reached the EU member state via the dangerous route across the Mediterranean so far this year, up from some 45,700 last year, according to the Interior Ministry in Rome.
Source : Libya Update