Libyan police have detained some 1,930 illegal migrants over the past 27 days trying to sail to Europe via Italy from the Libyan coast, the Interior Ministry said yesterday.

In the same period, the Libyan government deported 3,768 other would-be migrants from several African countries, who had been arrested earlier attempting to cross illegally to Italy, the Ministry added in a statement. The statement, carried by the state news agency Jana, said the arrests and deportations were part of “sustained efforts by (the authorities) to crack down on illegal migration”. Libya is due to host an Africa-Europe conference on migration in November. New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report last month asylum seekers are among the thousands of African migrants deported by Libya in recent years, an abuse effectively ignored by European nations in their dealings with Tripoli.

The Libyan government, which has yet to offer any public reaction to the rights group’s allegations, has complained about what some officials in Tripoli called a “migrant invasion”.