Nigeria on Midweek called for an international inquiry afterwards 26 women as well as girls drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
The bodies of the victims -- all believed to live on Nigerians -- were brought on a Castilian send to Italia end Sunday, where the regime are looking into how they died.
Twenty-three lost their lives end Fri when the inflatable dinghy they were travelling on sank. Three others were institute during operations before inward the week.
The unusual ministry building inward Abuja said its mission inward Rome said the victims were aged fourteen to 18. It described their deaths every bit "a monumental loss as well as a distressing minute for our country".
Italian investigators convey said they would live on looking for signs of violence precisely believed it was unlikely they were victims of sexual activity trafficking.
Nigeria's National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking inward Persons (NAPTIP) said at that topographic point should live on "a high marking investigation yesteryear the United Nations (into) this incident as well as others before it along the Mediterranean region".
It added inward a statement: "We postulate to know the identities of the owners of the rickety boats that behaviour people along that axis too every bit their owners, then they tin live on prosecuted."
The cardinal Mediterranean road from the coast of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to Italia is currently the favoured road of undocumented migrants, most of whom are Nigerians.
Numbers convey increased because of unemployment as well as recession inward Nigeria. Established trafficking networks for prostitution inward Europe appointment dorsum to the 1980s.
NAPTIP said human trafficking as well as irregular migration were criminal as well as needed to terminate because of the high numbers of deaths.
The International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday that virtually 75 per centum of the nearly 155,000 migrants as well as refugees who convey reached Europe yesteryear body of body of water this yr arrived inward Italy.
A full of 2,715 people died on the cardinal Mediterranean road betwixt Jan 1 as well as Nov 5, it added.
In July, the United Nations refugee means said it would similar sanctions against known traffickers as well as people smugglers, including go bans as well as property freezes.
AFP