Italian coastguard officials have intercepted a number of rubber dinghies carrying a total of around 100 economic migrants off the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa, officials said Monday. The migrants, who are said to hail from North Africa, have been taken to a detention center on the island, said to be already full to overflowing due to a surge in attempted crossings in recent weeks. The tiny island, south of Sicily, is often used as an entry point to Europe by illegal immigrants from Africa, Pakistan and the Middle East, up to a thousand of whom have been detained by authorities in recent weeks alone. Officials attribute the rise in illegal migration to a combination of warm weather and calm seas, encouraging traffickers to attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
