The interior minister of Cyprus, Constantinos Petrides, told members of the press that the Cypriot government will put forward measures to ease the spike of asylum seekers. The Mediterranean country hopes to offload asylum seekers on other EU states. "If these numbers continue to increase, I admit that we will no longer be able to cope with it," Petrides said. Cyprus has a population of 1.1 million and received some 4,000 asylum applications in the first eight months of 2018.