Another nine boats carrying 660 irregular migrants, all Tunisian,
arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa last night.

The migrants are said to have left from Tunisa.

The latest arrivals bring the number of migrants reaching
Lampedusa since Sunday night to more than 1,500 and to about 8,000
in the past five weeks.

Bad weather in the past two weeks had led only to sporadic and
relatively small numbers of Tunisian migrants landing on the island
which had at one point seen the arrival of about 5,000 migrants
over a three-day period.

All the migrants who landed overnight were taken to the migrant
reception centre on the island where they were given immediate
assistance.

Staff from IOM, UNHCR and Save the Children are working in
shifts at the centre to provide legal counselling to the migrants
with respective focus on economic migrants, asylum-seekers and
unaccompanied minors.

Among the 1,000 migrants who arrived overnight Sunday was a
40-year-old German woman, with her seven-year-old daughter.

She told IOM that unable to take her daughter back to Europe
after leaving her husband, a well-connected and wealthy doctor in
Tunisia, she had no alternative but to use human smugglers to reach
Europe as her husband was refusing to give her daughter's
passport.

She and her daughter spent 10 days in a locked building by the
sea before they could make the journey by boat to Lampedusa.

IOM is now in touch with the German Embassy in Rome.

Most of the migrants who have arrived in Lampedusa say they have
come to find work or join families.

Despite efforts by the Italian government to transfer 6,000
migrants in recent weeks to other reception centres on Sicily and
in southern Italy, the reception centre on Lampedusa is again
stretched.

There are now nearly 1,600 migrants in the centre which can
normally accommodate 800 people.

For further information, please contact:

Simona Moscarelli

IOM Rome

Tel: +39 06 44 186 235

E-mail: "mailto:smoscarelli@iom.int">smoscarelli@iom.int