Over 613,000 people cross Mediterranean to Europe
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MORE than 613,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since the beginning of the year and over 3,100 have died trying, the International Organization for Migration said yesterday.
Since January, nearly 473,000 people — most of them refugees fleeing brutal conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — have landed in Greece, while more than 137,300 have arrived in Italy, according to the latest figures from the IOM.
The UN refugee agency meanwhile said that although arrivals in Greece had slowed somewhat in October compared to the previous month, there had been a sharp increase in recent days, with as many as 85 boats arriving daily.
“The surge in arrivals could be the result of a temporary improvement in the weather, a rush to beat the onset of winter, and a fear that European borders may soon close,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said.
He said that throughout Wednesday, up to six boats were seen arriving at a time on the island of Lesbos, most of them rubber rafts carrying about 50 people each.
The increase in arrivals has added to an already chaotic situation on the Greek islands, and Edwards said UNHCR staff had been briefly evacuated from a registration site on Lesbos on Thursday when violence flared there.
The agency’s staff had returned to the center yesterday morning, he said.
As many as 4,000 people meanwhile remained stranded near the landing spot on the north coast of the island, after bus transfers to the reception center were halted due to the overcrowding there, Edwards said.
Some of them were now trying to walk the 70 kilometers across the island to its capital Mitilini, he said.
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