Italian officials say the government has threatened to block foreign boats from delivering African migrants to its ports, declaring the situation to be “unsustainable”.

“We can’t go on like this,” a source told AFP after media reports that Maurizio Massari, Italy’s ambassador to the European Union (EU), handed a letter to the bloc warning the country was considering closing its doors to boats of migrants.

“The ambassador highlighted that Italy’s efforts have been enormous and well beyond international obligations, and under the current circumstances it is difficult for our authorities to allow further disembarkations of migrants,” an Italian diplomat told German news agency DPA of the meeting with EU migration Commissioner Dimitri Avramopoulos.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Italy “cannot go on like this”, and accused other EU nations of “looking the other way”.

The threat comes after local elections at the weekend saw the ruling, globalist Democratic Party (PD) suffer heavy losses at the ballot box to the centre-right Forza Italia and the anti-mass migration Northern League party.

More than 10,000 Africans were ferried from Libya to Italy between Sunday and Tuesday — with 5,000 arriving on Monday alone — and whilst the Italian coastguard coordinates the operations, a large number of the ships taking part are NGOs sailing under foreign flags.

A number of these organisations have been accused by Italian authorities of “colluding” with criminal people-smugglers to bring migrants to Europe. Prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro reported that phone calls were being made from Libya to NGO vessels offshore to help smugglers complete the final leg of the journey in a billion-dollar European smuggling operation.

Several of the NGOs have financial ties to globalist billionaire George Soros, who has openly admitted that his goal is to bring down Europe’s borders.

The Hungarian financier’s Open Society Foundations has provided funding to Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) and Save the Children, whilst the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) receives major support from Avaaz.org, the European branch of the Soros-founded organisation Moveon.org.

Earlier this month, Breitbart London reported on the ousting at local elections in Italy of a mayor who had struck a deal with the Hungarian financier to turn the tiny island of Lampedusa into a gateway to Europe for migrants travelling from Africa.

In 2014, Giusi Nicolini signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE), in which the then-mayor agreed to let Soros’s international funding network “help strengthen Lampedusa’s capacity [to take migrants] and promote the island’s population and its guests”.

Noting how, with so many African migrants arriving on boats, Lampedusa “operates in a state of chronic emergency”, the document said OSIFE would send “manpower and expertise” to set up “humanitarian” and “cultural” projects on the island and facilitate mass migration to mainland Europe.