Teenage girls found dead in Mediterranean sea

Thought to have been migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya

Rescuers recover a dead body from the Spanish ship 'Cantabria' in the harbour of Salerno, Italy (ANSA)

The bodies of 26 teenage women and girls have been found in the Mediterranean, Italian police said.

Aged between 14 and 18-years old, they are thought to have been migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya.

Investigators will try to discover whether they were tortured or sexually abused, Lorena Ciccotti, the police chief in the city of Salerno, told CNN.

The girls, believed to be from Niger and Nigeria, were transferred to the city by a Spanish navy ship that had been conducting rescue operations in the Mediterrenean. The Cantabria dropped off another 400 migrants it had been able to rescue.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman, Marco Rotunno, said the 26 dead were involved in a shipwreck two days ago off Libya.

Italian media reported others were believed to have perished but 60 people were rescued.

Humanitarian groups say some 2,500 migrants were picked up at sea in recent days, making it one of the most intense periods for rescues on the Mediterranean since Italy reached a deal with Libya to slow departures of smugglers' boats carrying migrants.

The number of migrants arriving in Italy so far this year is 30 percent lower than last year, totalling 111,716 at the end of last week, according to Interior Ministry figures.

This compares with almost 160,000 at the same period of 2016.

The UN's International Organisation for Migration put the number of dead in the central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy at more than 2,600 in the year through to 1 November.