Italy pleas for help with more than 8,000 migrants arriving on Lampedusa

Best of Today - A podcast by BBC Radio 4

Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini says overcrowded iron boats filled with migrants from Africa arriving on the island of Lampedusa is an ‘act of war’ . The UN migration agency says around eight and a half thousand people arrived in nearly two hundred boats between Monday and Wednesday this week. Today’s Nick Robinson speaks to Laurence Hart, Head of Mission in Italy at the International Organisation of Migrants who explains how unusual it is to have this amount of migrants arrive on the island. Italy's PM Georgia Meloni was elected with a promise to curb illegal migration. Nick also speaks to Nicola Proccacini, a close ally of Georgia Meloni who chairs the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament. Image credit: EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock