GENEVA: A record 4,077 migrants have died already this year crossing deserts and seas worldwide, three-quarters of them in perilous journeys across the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, an aid agency said yesterday.
They include an estimated 500 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East feared drowned in a shipwreck off Malta in mid-September after smugglers deliberately rammed their boat, the International Organisation for Migration said.
In its first comprehensive report on such deaths, the IOM said 40,000 migrants worldwide are believed to have perished since 2000, 22,000 of them seeking a better life in Europe.
“Limited opportunities for safe and regular migration drive would-be migrants into the hands of smugglers, feeding an unscrupulous trade that threatens the lives of desperate people,” IOM Director-General William Lacy Swing said in a statement. “We need to put an end to this cycle.”
A record 3,072 migrants have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, as the “sailing season” draws to an end, against some 2,360 in 2013, according to the IOM report.
REUTERS
