The UN has said that seven in 10 people crossing the Mediterranean from Libya are economic migrants and the rest are 'people in need of protection' like refugees and asylum-seekers.

The U.N. refugee agency says people smuggling and migrant flows in Libya are on the rise, so Europe may face increased flows of migrants and refugees in the future.

UNHCR says 84,830 migrants and refugees have reached Italy's shores so far this year from Libya, which is a 19-percent increase from last year.

In a new report on migration trends in Libya issued today, UNHCR noted that largely lawless Libya has become a major thoroughfare for migrants, but patterns of movement are changing.

The U.N. refugee agency says people smuggling and migrant flows in Libya are on the rise, so Europe may face increased flows of migrants and refugees in the future

UNHCR says 'trafficking for sexual exploitation' seems to be increasing, particularly affecting Nigerian and Cameroonian women and organized crime rings are becoming internationalized.

Authorities in Italy are investigating an attack on an empty hotel designated to host migrants, near the northern city of Brescia.

No one was injured when two incendiary devices were hurled Sunday at the Hotel Eureka, which sustained scant damage. It has been vacant for years.

The UNHCR says 84,830 migrants and refugees have reached Italy's shores so far this year from Libya, a 19-percent increase from a year earlier

Vobarno town Mayor Giuseppe Lancini said interior ministry officials told him last week the hotel would host 35 asylum-seekers.

He said he briefed the residents, who number about 400, of a hamlet near the hotel and that the local population opposed the decision.

Premier Paolo Gentiloni's center-left government has stepped up pressure on fellow EU nations to convince them to take in some of the hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy in recent years.