No fewer than 1,500 refugees and migrants have lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean in the first seven months of 2018, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
The refugee agency said the bleak milestone was confirmed after more than 850 lives were lost in June and July alone, marking the Mediterranean crossing as the deadliest sea route in the world.
UNHCR said it was particularly concerned, as the rate of deaths was increasing, in spite of the fact that total number of people arriving on European shores is significantly reduced compared to previous years.
Around 60,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, about half as many as in 2017 and a return to pre-2014 levels.
However, one in every 31 people attempting the crossing in June and July died or are missing, compared to one in 49 in 2017, the UN agency said.
Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR Special Envoy for the Mediterranean, said: “UNHCR urges States and authorities along transit routes to take all necessary action to dismantle smuggler networks.
“In order to save lives at sea, we must use appropriate and necessary measures to hold to account, those who seek to gain profit from the exploitation of vulnerable human beings’’.
Exploitative traffickers and smugglers were reportedly organising increasingly dangerous crossings, in ever-more unseaworthy and flimsy vessels.
These boats, which smugglers severely overloaded with passengers, are then left to sail out at sea in the hope that a rescue will come in time, UNHCR regretted.
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