Europe pledges more help amid migrant surge

PARIS — France, Germany and the European Union on Monday pledged more money for Libya’s coast guard and more support for Italy to cope with a surge of migrant arrivals from Africa.

The United Nations refugee agency, meanwhile, reported that people drawn to Libya with the hope of finding jobs are increasingly trying to reach Europe.

The intensified European effort comes after the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, on Saturday decried an “unfolding tragedy” in Italy. Grandi noted that more than 2,000 people have lost their lives on the Libya-to-Italy sea route this year.

Officials appeared to be bracing for the prospect of an accelerated flow of migrants as the Mediterranean weather warms, making often-perilous maritime journeys more attractive.

“We are only at the beginning of the summer, and without swift collective action, we can only expect more tragedies at sea,” Grandi, who is Italian, said in a statement.

On Monday, the EU migration commissioner and the German, French and Italian interior ministers promised extra money and training for the Libyan coast guard and efforts to reinforce Libya’s largely lawless southern border that people smugglers exploit. No further details, including how much more money was pledged, were immediately provided.

The officials held a meeting in Paris on Sunday after Italy pleaded for European help.

Grandi’s office said Monday that smuggling and migrant flows in Libya were on the rise, and he predicted Europe could face a greater influx in the future. He said patterns of movement through Libya have been changing, as organized crime rings have become internationalized and “trafficking for sexual exploitation” appears to be increasing.

A U.N.-commissioned report released Monday found “about half of people who travel to Libya do so believing they can find jobs there, but end up fleeing onwards to Europe to escape life-threatening insecurity, instability, difficult economic conditions plus widespread exploitation and abuse,” a news release said.

The U.N. refugee agency says 84,830 migrants and refugees have reached Italy’s shores this year from Libya, a 19 percent increase from a year earlier. Seven in 10 are economic migrants, and the rest are “people in need of protection,” such as refugees and asylum seekers.

Vincent Cochetel, the refugee agency’s special envoy for the Central Mediterranean, told reporters in Geneva that the agency’s teams have indicated “no slowing down on movement to Libya, which may mean that a larger number of people may continue to try to leave through the Central Mediterranean route.”

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s center-left government has stepped up pressure on fellow EU nations to persuade them to take in some of the hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean and taken to Italy in recent years.

Gentiloni said Monday that unless other EU countries assume some of the burden in the migrant crisis, the huge numbers could fuel hostility in Italian society.

“Italy has mobilized to deal with the flows of migrants,” he said, adding that Europe must help if it “wants to stay faithful to its own principles, own history, own civilization.”

Italy will host a conference in Rome this week aimed at protecting the EU’s external borders.

On Sunday, unidentified assailants hurled two incendiary devices at a hotel designated to host migrants near the northern Italian city of Brescia, authorities said Monday. Officials were investigating the attack on the Hotel Eureka, which had scant damage from the attack. The hotel has been vacant for years.

Mayor Giuseppe Lancini of Vobarno, a town northeast of Brescia, said Interior Ministry officials told him last week that the hotel would host 35 asylum seekers, adding that area residents opposed the decision.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Romanian border police detained 16 migrants from Iraq and Syria who told authorities they wanted to reach the EU’s visa-free Schengen travel zone.

Police said in a statement Monday that they found the migrants some 200 yards from the border with Hungary.

The statement said there were six women, three men and seven children, the youngest 2 years old.