Smugglers Make £1million a Day Trafficking Migrants

The Mediterranean migrant crisis is being fuelled afresh by criminal gangs making £1million a day smuggling over tens of thousands from as far away as Bangladesh, reported The Sun. 

An investigation by MPs found that while the number of war refugees from Syria crossing to Italy is going down, illegal immigrants from the poor Asian country are spiralling.

The dangerous crossing from the lawless Libyan coastline will soon be dominated by trafficking gangs casting afar for new business.

In interviews with migrants in Sicily, the MPs' report for the Conservative Middle East Council discovered organised people smugglers fly them from Bangladesh to Istanbul and Dubai, and then onto Libya.

Networks also operate in Pakistan, as well as the more stable African countries of Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Guinea.

The business reaps as much as £1m a day for the gangs, who dispatch 100 boats a day crammed with passengers.

Only 635 Syrian and 170 Libyans arrived in Italy in the first four months of 2017, but 10,000 came from Nigeria and 4,135 from Bangladesh - now the second highest nationality.

Of the 104,670 who crossed from Libya to Italy in the first nine months of 2017, 8,807 were Bangladeshi and 17,048 were Nigerians.

In contrast, the number of Syrians using the notorious central Mediterranean route was just 1,987.