October marked a record monthly high in the number of migrants arriving in Italy in recent years, with over 27,000 people reaching its shores. Italy's interior ministry released figures Thursday showing that 26,161 people - almost all from West Africa and the Horn of Africa - arrived here this month. Almost another 1,000 were pulled from their dinghies later that day.
Even at the height of recent summers, arrivals have only ever once exceeded 25,000 a month. The new record brings the total number this year to 159,000, outstripping the 2015 total of 153,000 and approaching the record of 170,000 arrivals in 2014. "The smugglers are certainly better organised, since they have been able to send off up to 11,000 people in two days," Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Italy, told AFP.
"But the migrants tell us they are afraid that the route will close in a few months," particularly with a new European programme launching this week to train the Libyan coast guard. "And if there is one thing that migrants do not want, it is to be rescued by Libyan coastguards, who take them to detention centres and plunge them back into the cycle of abuse and violence," he added.
The IOM, which speaks to the arriving migrants, heard "staggering" stories of torture, rape, starvation and murder in the crisis-hit country, he said. Many were squeezing onto the overcrowded smuggler dinghies and increasingly unseaworthy boats, with over 200 people dying in the last ten days and fears of greater tragedies to come in the coming weeks if the mass departures continue.
Italy finds itself in a particularly challenging position with most of the new arrivals forced to remain in the country due to border blocks imposed by its neighbours. Centres for asylum-seekers - now overwhelmingly located in former hotels - housed 66,000 people in 2014 and 103,000 by the end of 2015.