Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said human traffickers from Libya were disguising migrant boats as fishing vessels and travelling to Sfax in Tunisia to board migrants from there, according to Italy's Agenzia Nova.

Tajani explained "In Tunisia – continue – they are doing as much as they can, in these hours they have informed us that they have seized 4 boats ready to go, weapons, money at Sfax. But they have two huge problems. One is that of the fake fishing boats that leave Libya and, led by human traffickers, arrive in Sfax and load migrants. The other, connected, is that it is difficult for them to intervene due to the scarcity of the means and men they have available: there are armed forces that make exhausting shifts, but they cannot curb the flow ”.

"The push from the African continent is enormous due to the food crisis, there are crises in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso and, today, also in Niger, which was a country committed to containing the exodus," he added.