2,18,000 migrants crossed Mediterranean in October

More than 2,18,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in October — a monthly record and more than during the whole of 2014, the United Nations said on Monday.

“Last month was a reco-rd month for arrivals,” UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told AFP, pointing out that “arrivals in October paralleled the entire 2014.”

In October, 2,18,394 people made the perilous crossing — all but 8,000 of them landing in Greece — compared to 2,16,054 Mediterranean arrivals during all of 2014, UN figures show.

The soaring numbers of arrivals in October brought to over 7,44,000 the number of people who have made the journey so far in 2015.

The October figures sho-w that despite the increasingly harrowing conditions at sea at the onset of winter, refugees from Syr-ia and other trouble spots continue to pile into boats heading west, fearing that Europe is about to close its borders. Among the more than 6,00,000 migrants and refugees who have crossed to Greece since the beginning of 2015, 94 per cent come from the world’s top 10 refugee-producing countries.

The ballooning number of crossings has had dire consequences, with the numbers of deaths piling up by the day.

Some 3,440 people have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2015, according to UNHCR numbers last week.

The figures do not take into account the latest tragedy, with at least 15 migrants and refugees, including six children, drowning off Greece on Sunday when two boats making the hazardous crossing from Turkey capsized.

Most of the Mediterranean deaths in 2015 have happened on the longer, more dangerous route to Italy, but with surging numbers attempting the far shorter crossing from Turkey to Greece, the death toll along that route has been mounting.

The latest tragedies bring the migrant death toll in Greece’s waters in October to over 80, many of them children.

At least 15 migrants seeking to reach Europe drowned off Greece as political talks in Germany, the EU’s top destination for refugees, failed to produce a consensus on how to handle the influx.

Two boats making the hazardous crossing from Turkey capsized in the Aegean Sea off Greek islands yesterday, leaving at least 15 dead, including six children, officials said.

The first shipwreck took place 20 metres from the island of Samos.

The bodies of 10 migrants found locked inside the small boat’s cabin, six of them children, were recovered from the capsized vessel, the Greek Coast Guard said. The body of a young girl was found washed up on a beach, while 15 people were rescued alive, the Coast Guard said.

In a separate incident off the nearby island of Farmakonisi, rescuers found the bodies of four migrants after a boat said by survivors to be carrying 15 people sank en route to Greece, authorities said.

Despite the increasingly perilous conditions at sea at the onset of winter, refugees from Syria and other troublespots continue to pile into boats heading west, for fear that Europe is about to close its borders.

Germany is the preferred destination of most, but the country’s ruling coalition is deeply divided over how to handle the influx. Two rounds of negotiations between Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of her two coalition partners ended on Sunday without a breakthrough.

“Several points... Still need to be resolved including the issue of ‘transit zones’,” Ms Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said, referring to a proposal to create airport-style processing points on Germany’s borders to allow would-be refugees who do not fulfil asylum criteria to be moved out quickly.