LiveNearly 500 migrants who tried to cross the central Mediterranean have been brought back to Libya, according to a UN spokesman, two days after charity groups lost contact with the boat carrying them. “Libya is an unsafe port where migrants should never be brought back,” Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration wrote on Twitter. He told Reuters there were 485 migrants and they docked in the Libyan port of Benghazi on Friday. In a separate incident, German charity SOS Humanity said 27 migrants were picked up at sea by an oil tanker and illegally taken back to Libya. European governments have taken an increasingly hard line on migration, including in Italy, which is facing a surge in sea arrivals.
