According to the Italian interior ministry, over 5,000 people were rescued between Sunday and Monday. Sunday was especially hard, with 22 rescue operations coordinated by the general command of port authorities in the Strait of Sicily. Around 3,300 people were rescued. The migrants were mostly from Guinea (2,378), Nigeria (2,088), Ivory Coast (1,823) and Bangladesh (1,554). Over 2,2000 unaccompanied minors have arrived this year until now. Meanwhile, hosting centers are grappling with the inflow and have to manage 174,000 people, most of whom (136,000) are in temporary structures. The Lombardy region hosts the highest number of migrants (23,408, or 13 percent of the total), followed by Campania (14,870), Lazio (14,646) and Piedmont (14,030). The interior ministry currently can host 200,000 refugees, but the plan would need to be updated if more immigrants arrived. There are 2,800 municipalities hosting migrants and the objective of the ministry and the association of Italian municipalities ANCI is to increase their number so that refugees are distributed across the territory in small numbers and can be managed more effectively. The plan provides for no more than six migrants in municipalities of up to 2,000 residents and for two in every 1,000 residents for 14 metropolitan cities. EU relocation plan struggles to take off The relocation chapter, which should have helped Italy deal with the emergency, is having a hard time to take off although something is moving. As of today, 4,170 asylum seekers have been transferred to other European countries, according to a Commission plan that however provided for 40,000 reallocations from Italy in two years.

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