Greek police found 41 migrants hiding in a refrigerated truck during a routine check on a motorway in northern Greece on Monday, police officials said.

Two people were arrested in Vietnam and one in Ireland as the UK probes deaths of 39 migrants discovered in Essex. All victims are now believed to be Vietnamese. Police called on two haulier brothers to come forward.

Libyan authorities fired warning shots in the air and pointed mounted guns at rescuers and migrants, according to the humanitarian group Sea-Eye. A group spokesman said the act was unprecedented.

Migrants brought to shore by sea rescuers are to be distributed across the EU. But the bloc's interior ministers failed to draft a blueprint on how to do so at their recent summit, Bernd Riegert reports from Luxembourg.

Since 2017, more than 14,000 young Nigerians have returned from Libya under a United Nations voluntary repatriation programme. Many spend months, even years stranded in Libya, sold as slaves by their smugglers. But once back home in Nigeria, life is even more difficult than before: saddled with debt, struggling to find work, broken by their treatment at the hands of the traffickers and by their failed dreams.

Cyprus desperately needs the EU's assistance to deal with the influx of migrants. Those already there are facing atrocious conditions while they wait for their applications to be processed.

'There is no evidence that migrants steal jobs'

Six EU countries have said they will accept more than 300 migrants from a rescue ship stranded in the Mediterranean. The Maltese prime minister said none would stay in Malta, where they will disembark.

Italy has allowed over 80 migrants who have been stranded on a Spanish migrant rescue vessel off the coast of Lampedusa to disembark. Prosecutors said the decision was due to the "difficult" situation on board.

Migrants using traditional routes from Africa to Europe often fail to reach their destinations. Smugglers now offer new options, such as taking migrants to faraway countries by plane.

The migrants were plucked from several inflatable boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and returned to Morocco. The rescue came a day one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean this year.

Migrants on seven boats are crossing Mediterranean waters to escape Libya, according to airborne Sea-Watch activists. Italy’s interior minister is blocking entry to an Italian coast guard ship carrying rescued migrants.