Mediterranean boat people numbers soar to near 100,000 this year
Thu Jul 24, 2014 2:12pm GMT
By Tom Miles
GENEVA, July 24 (Reuters) - Almost 100,000 boat people have made the
dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe this year, a roughly 60
percent increase on the whole of last year, and about 800 have died in the
attempt, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday.
The exodus has surged this year, as far more migrants put their lives in the
hands of smugglers or unseaworthy vessels in a desperate attempt to reach
Europe.
More than 75,000 made the trip in the first six months of the year, landing
up in Italy, Greece, Spain and Malta, the UNHCR agency said. Their number
included 10,500 children, two-thirds of them unaccompanied or separated from
their families.
The number of the whole of 2013 was around 60,000.
The UNHCR also said that this year the numbers are accelerating: 21,000 have
reached Italy since the beginning of July.
Meanwhile, more than 260 people have died or gone missing in the past 10
days, bringing to 800 the total number of deaths so far in 2014, compared
with 600 in the whole of 2013 and 500 in 2012.
"Europeans need to take urgent action to stop this catastrophe getting worse
in the second half of 2014," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio
Guterres said in a statement.
Many of the migrants are fleeing violence in Eritrea and Syria, and most
travel from Libya or elsewhere in North Africa.
"Rescued refugees and migrants have reported handing over their life savings
to smugglers, in order to travel in unseaworthy and overcrowded dinghies,
packed into a few metres of space without food, water or life jackets," the
UNHCR statement said. (Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)