(AP) Intelligence reports indicate nearly 700,000 migrants are in Libya awaiting an opportunity to set out by sea toward Italy, a lawmaker from Premier Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party said Sunday, but a U.N. migration official called the number not credible.
Tommaso Foti, the lower parliamentary house whip for the Brothers of Italy Party, told television channel Tgcom24 the Italian secret services estimated that 685,000 migrants in Libya, many of them in detention camps, were eager to sail across the central Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats.
Separately, 30 migrants were missing and 17 were rescued some 100 nautical miles (180 kilometers) from Libya’s coast after their boat overturned while a commercial vessel was trying to take them aboard, the Italian coast guard reported Sunday night.
