Tunisia’s navy rescued more than 350 illegal migrants off its coast and was searching for hundreds more early yesterday after they tried to sail from neighbouring Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the local Red Cross said.

Boat smugglers often use Tunisia’s proximity to the Italian coast to ship migrants there. Tunisian authorities have rescued dozens of people travelling in unsafe boats in recent months.

“Naval forces have rescued at least 350 clandestine migrants off the coast near Ben Guerdane in an old boat that left from Libya,” local Red Cross representative Abd el Karim Rguiyi told Reuters.

“Among them are Syrians and families, Africans. Authorities are looking to save around 300 more.”

Ben Guerdane is a coastal town just across the border from Libya and not far from the tourist island resort of Djerba. The conflict in Libya between two rival governments and their armed forces has fomented a breakdown of order that smugglers have been quick to exploit to try to send thousands of illegal migrants across the Mediterranean to mainland Europe.

Meanwhile Macedonian police yesterday detained 128 illegal migrants from Syria, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries sheltering in five houses in a village near the border with Serbia, the Interior Ministry said.

Villagers had rented their houses to the migrants for €1,500 a month, ministry spokesman Vlado Kotevski said. He said four Macedonian nationals would be charged with people smuggling.

Migrants fleeing war, poverty and persecution in the Middle East and Africa are increasingly using the Balkans to reach Western Europe, as this route is deemed longer but safer than sailing across the Mediterranean, where thousands of migrants have died in rickety boats.