Over 170 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean by the Tunisian Navy

According to official information, the Tunisian Navy has rescued more than 170 migrants in the Mediterranean.

In three missions off the southern coast of Tunisia, 178 people were rescued and two bodies were recovered, the Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday.

The migrants from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, the Ivory Coast, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mali and Ethiopia set sail in the Libyan port city of Suwara on Saturday night in order to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

The Tunisian authorities had already picked up 267 migrants who had set off in Libya on Thursday.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), most of them were from Bangladesh.

The Red Crescent aid organization has already warned that all reception camps in southern Tunisia are full.

Libya is the main transit country for refugees from African countries who want to enter the European Union via the Mediterranean.

According to the IOM, more than a thousand migrants who had cast off in Libya have been stranded in Tunisia since January.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR registered 11,000 departures in Libya from January to April - over 70 percent more than in the same period of the previous year.

The route across the Mediterranean from North Africa to Southern Europe is one of the most dangerous refugee routes.

According to the UN, at least 760 people died from the beginning of January to the end of May trying to get to Europe by boat.

During all of 2020, 1,400 deaths had occurred in the Mediterranean.

mid / ans