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
Email: smoscarelli@iom.int