Libyan border guards said Tuesday (July 25) they had recovered the bodies of five migrants from an area where many people have been forcibly taken by Tunisian authorities.

The deceased were said to be of African origin and were found during a patrol in an area which the AFP news agency referred to as Dahr Al-Kass along the border with Tunisia; this could not be independently verified.

A video released by the border guard and reposted on social media by the NGO 'Refugees in Libya' showed adults and a child lying dead in the desert.

Since mid-July, Libyan border guards have rescued dozens of migrants who said Tunisian authorities had taken them to an uninhabited area near Al-Assah, 150 kilometers west of Tripoli and around 15 kilometers inside Libyan territory.

Several videos have been posted online showing deceased migrants as well as people arriving on foot across the Tunisian border.

Journalists from the AFP news agency have also witnessed migrants visibly exhausted and dehydrated after trekking through the desert.

Read more: Sub-Saharan migrants abandoned in the Tunisian desert: "We are going to die of thirst, help us."

Deaths of Fati Dosso and 6-year-old Marie

A photo of a mother and her child from Ivory Coast, who had died near the Libya-Tunisia border, was published in the online magazine Focus on Africa. The photo was taken by a Libyan journalist, Ahmad Khalifa.

Journalists and activists from Refugees in Libya helped identify the woman and child as Fati Dosso and daughter Marie, who was six years old.

Fati and and her husband Meengue Nymbilo Crepin, nicknamed Pato, had made several failed attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Europe. They had moved to Tunisia where they hoped to raise Marie, according to reporting by Italian journalist Antonella Napoli.

Pato had been with his wife and daughter when they were driven out of their camp in Tunisia and forced to flee to the border. Pato was still missing on Tuesday, when the bodies of Fati and Marie were discovered.

A spokesperson for Refugees in Libya, David Yambio, called on supporters to join a protest in front of the Tunisian embassy in Milan "to commemorate the mother and child who died in the desert … and to protest against the new agreements that Europe has signed to curb migratory flows."

EU-Tunisia partnership

The EU recently signed a new ‘strategic partnership’ to provide Tunisia with €100 million to help prevent migrants from reaching European shores. At the weekend, Tunisia's President Kais Saied also attended an international conference on migration in Rome, hosted by the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

Migrant rights advocates say Saied is responsible for inciting a wave of violence against Black Africans in Tunisia. Several racist and xenophobic remarks made by the president during a national council security meeting in February led to a sharp increase in attacks on sub-Saharan migrants.

Expulsions of migrants from Tunisia intensified following the death of a Tunisian man on June 3 during a clash between locals and migrants in the port city of Sfax, a departure point for many hoping to reach Europe.

An independent panel of UK experts has demanded that Tunisia stop the "collective expulsions" of migrants.

"We call on the authorities to immediately halt any further deportations and to continue and expand humanitarian access to a dangerous area on the Tunisian-Libyan border where many, including pregnant women and children, have already been deported," they said in a statement on July 18.

With AFP