These figures bring last week’s death tolls to 880. Numerous boats don’t make it.
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More than 2,500 migrants and refugees have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year, the UN’s refugee agency has said.
Those factors appear to mean that more people were dying even as fewer were coming. The second boat sank Thursday – the most deadly capsizing last week – and carried mostly Eritreans, according to the IOM. Another eight people died on board another boat and four people were reported dead in a fire on another boat. After several hours, the smaller boat began to take on water. “We are concerned over the possibility that at least 700 people may have died in three boats since Wednesday”, he confirmed.
The UNHCR said more than 700 had drowned. But the refugee agency emphasized that its estimate was conservative.
The deaths mark the latest wave of fatalities involving migrants boarding crowded boats in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.
Almost 204,000 people have made the risky journey across the Mediterranean so far this year, according to UNHCR.
Police in Catania, Sicily, said in a statement on Tuesday they had detained 16 men who were rescued in global waters along with hundreds of migrants and brought to the port city on May 28.
But the situation could have been much worse.
The vulnerability of those trying to cross the sea was captured by a photograph released by a German humanitarian organization showing a rescuer cradling a dead infant found floating after a ship packed with migrants capsized off the coast of Libya on Friday.
The aid group said it helped save about 600 people off the Libyan coast. “Because my brother, sister, family will lose their lives in this channel”, Tekle said as he waited to have his arrival in Italy recorded.
Despite the dangers, the flood of migrants probably won’t stop anytime soon. In 2015, 46,000 people traveled the treacherous seas; those numbers have already been topped in the first five months of 2016.
In the first five months of 2016, a staggering 204,311 refugees and migrants have arrived to Europe by sea, compared to 91,860 in the same period previous year.
“On the one hand there needs to be better focus on how the people smugglers behind this can be more effectively tackled, but on the other it’s still absolutely vital that serious attention is paid to the need for safe, regular alternatives so we don’t see loss of life continuing like this year after year”, Grandi added.
Hungary has set up three transit zones after the country greatly stemmed the flow of migrants toward Western Europe with razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.
The centre will be located in northern Paris where hundreds of arriving migrants without a place to go often camp near subway stations.
Foreign Minister Peter Szijarto says Hungary will continue to “protect her own borders”, and that solidarity within the European Union means “you comply with worldwide regulations and that you stop the flow of illegal migration”.
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UNHCR repeated its call for more action to be taken to tackle people smugglers.
