EU states and the US have urged a Russia-backed Libyan warlord to hand back oil ports, after a US warning that Russia was trying to do in Libya what it did in Syria.

The Naval Chief of Staff of the Presidential Council (PC) of the Government of National Accord (GNA), Ayoub Qasim, demanded the European Union (EU) and the African states to take all needed procedures to stop the illegal migration waves via the Libyan coast.

An officer under the command of the renegade Libyan general Khalifa Haftar was allegedly taped talking to a media tycoon about a propaganda campaign aimed at persuading Libyans that the Tripoli-backed fighters who retook some of the country’s key oil ports recently were al-Qaeda militants.

Egyptian authorities are concerned by recent losses sustained by ally Khalifa Haftar in two key oil ports on Libya’s Mediterranean coast.

On February 21, the bodies of 74 migrants were found by the Libyan Red Crescent on the shore of Zawiya, a Libyan town known for being a capital of fuel smuggling and human trafficking.

The foreign minister in the Beida-based interim government, Mohamed Dayri, has attacked the call for made by the president of the European parliament, Antonio Tajani, for the EU to set up refugee reception centres in Libya.

The European Union should step up funding for the United Nation’s migration agency to return migrants stranded in Libya to their home countries further south in Africa, the bloc’s current president says.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani has called for the EU to set up refugee reception centers in Libya and to implement a “Marshall Plan” for Africa in order to curb migration to the bloc, Die Zeit reported Monday.

The head of EU border agency Frontex on Monday criticised charities that rescue migrants off Libya, arguing that they encourage the traffickers who profit from the dangerous Mediterranean crossings.

Since the controversial deal between Turkey and the European Union (EU) in March 2016 has largely succeeded in preventing refugees from reaching Europe through the eastern Mediterranean route, EU decisionmakers have turned their attention to the central Mediterranean.