Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has urged European leaders to make it more difficult for African migrants to get into Europe.
A German government report, which leaked to the Bild newspaper, suggests there could be up to 6.6 million people trying to get into Europe, including 2.5 million Africans waiting to cross from North Africa.
It is thought that 2,000 people have lost their lives making the crossing since the start of the year.
Gates warned that European leaders risk deepening the migrant crisis by being too generous to those arriving on the continent.
He said countries such as Germany will not be able to handle the “huge” numbers of migrants waiting to leave Africa and find a better life overseas.
Instead, the 61-year-old suggested spending more on foreign aid to treat the root causes of migration, while making it more difficult for people to reach the continent.
Gates’ warning came as top security officials also warned that Germany should brace for further attacks given growing numbers of potential Islamist militants.
Speaking in an interview with the German Welt am Sonntag newspaper, with a translation published by Breitbart, Gates said: “On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees.
“But the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa.
“Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.”
Gates praised Chancellor Merkel’s commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid as “phenomenal”, and asked other European leaders to follow suit.
But he added: “Europe must make it more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes.”
His own foundation has spent years and invested hundreds of millions of dollars to fight poverty and disease in Africa.
Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency, told reporters, on Tuesday: “We must expect further attacks by individuals or terror groups.
“Islamist terrorism is the biggest challenge facing the BfV and we see it as one of the biggest threats facing the internal security of Germany.”
The agency’s annual report for 2016 said there were 24,400 Islamists in Germany, including around 9,700 Salafists, and the number of Salafists had increased to 10,100 this year.
The total also includes some 10,000 members of the Turkish Islamist Milliu Gorus movement, the report showed.
The total number of suspected Islamists marks a drop from the year earlier, but the report said that did not mean the threat had diminished.
“In fact the opposite is the case,” the report said, citing a shift towards “a more violence-prone and terrorist spectrum …”
The report said hundreds of “jihadists” had entered the country among the over one million migrants who had come into Germany over the past two years.
Maassen said an estimated 930 people had left Germany to fight with Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, of whom about 20 percent were women.
An estimated 145 of the total people had since died, he said.
Meanwhile, German police have increased their presence in and around Hamburg in preparation for the Group of 20 summit in the city on Friday and Saturday.
Also, Italian interior minister Marco Minniti has held emergency talks with his French and German counterparts over the migrant crisis.
Minniti has threatened to close Italian ports to privately-funded vessels helping to rescue migrants from ships in the Mediterranean.
He said that other European nations must agree to shoulder some of the burden, or Italy will cut funding to those refusing to help.
An estimated 82,000 migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year, up 19 percent on previous year, The Telegraph reports.
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