There were moments of tension at Lampedusa port on Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of migrants and refugees who had recently disembarked on the island demanded to be allowed to leave the pier.

Finance police offers made a pre-emptive charge in order to try to disperse crowds trying to break through the safety barrier.

The new arrivals then sat down without further protest, as numerous other small boats were lined up waiting to disembark.

    As of 5 pm local time there were 6,762 migrants and refugees on Lampedusa – more than the island’s population of around 6,000 – after an unprecedented wave of arrivals in recent days.

Most of the new arrivals were in the hotspot in Contrada Imbriacola, with smaller groups in various other parts of the island including at the pier.

On Wednesday 720 people were transferred off the island by passenger ferry to Porto Empedocle and 180 on a flight chartered by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

A further 750 people were also expected to leave the island later in the day.

Meanwhile, the migrant sea rescue hotline Alarm Phone said Wednesday a group of approximately 47 people could be in distress off Lampedusa.

“We have made contact with a small boat carrying 47 people in distress just 10 km off Lampedusa,” Alarm Phone said.

“At 5 am they told us they were adrift without engine fuel.

Since then we have had no further news. We hope they have been rescued,” it added.

‘The issue is how to stop people from arriving’- Meloni

The relocation of asylum seekers from countries of first arrival to third countries under a European solidarity mechanism is secondary to the real issue of preventing people from arriving in the first place, Premier Giorgia Meloni said.

“The question of relocations is secondary, very few people have been relocated in recent months, it is a Linus blanket,” Meloni said in a recorded interview for the nightly current affairs programme Five Minutes on Rai1.

“The question is not how we offload the problem, it is to stop arrivals to Italy,” she added, referring to the decision by Germany to suspend relocation procedures for asylum seekers arriving in Italy under a 2022 European solidarity mechanism until Rome agrees to resume taking back asylum seekers who arrived in Italy and then moved on to Germany under the rules governing asylum in Europe.

“I still don’t see concrete solutions,” said Meloni.

Dublin requires asylum applications to be processed in the country of first entry, putting national asylum systems in countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain which bear the brunt of sea arrivals under huge strain.

Via ANSA