Migrants in Tunisia are being sold as slaves to Libyan gangs for as little as £10 per person with the complicity of the EU, a damning new report claims.

After being rounded up by Tunisian authorities, they are taken across the border and exchanged for measly sums of money, it is alleged.

Women migrants fetch more – up to £75 each – because they are used as sex slaves, according to the report, which was compiled by a group of humanitarian organisations after months of research carried out in the shanty camps and desert detention centres of North Africa.

The non-governmental organisations (NGOs) claim that the capture and sale of black sub-Saharan African migrants is being “enabled” by the EU and Italy, which have struck deals with the Tunisian government to crack down on migrants and stop boats from trying to cross the Mediterranean.

“They sold us to the Libyans. I really mean buying and selling, like for objects, they sold us like slaves,” one young migrant told the researchers.