The death toll amongst migrants trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea is the highest so far on record.
“We can confirm that at least 3,800 people have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, making the death toll in 2016 the highest ever recorded,” UN refugee agency spokesman William Spindler said.
The increase in fatalities has come despite fewer migrants attempting the journey this year than had in 2015.
The UN agency said that 327,800 people have tried to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, compared to one million in 2015.
But while fewer people were trying to cross the riskier eastern Mediterranean to Greece, the number of migrants leaving north Africa to reach Italy is about the same as last year.
One cause in the mounting death rate, according to the UN, is the use of “flimsy inflatable rafts that often do not last the journey” in addition to overloaded boats.
“This may be to do with the shifting smuggler business model or geared towards lowering detection risks, but it also makes the work of rescuers harder,” Spindler said.
Just this week alone, more than 90 migrants are believed to be missing after their rubber boat sank off the coast of Libya where the coastguard had been able to rescue 29 other passengers.
Earlier, 25 bodies were recovered from another rubber boat off the Libyan coast. Rescuers report the people appeared to have been suffocated by fuel inhalation.
Médecins Sans Frontières said it saved 107 other passengers from that boat and another 139 people from a raft.
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But note Italy and Greece's's problem with refugee and economic migrants. These new arrivals have done their homework on the Internet and know their chances of a prosperous new life are far higher in the quality EU countries these therefore aim for. But these countries are now swamped and with the somewhat rougher Visegrad group has stopped migration to them.
So will the now denuded Club Med countries whose own brightest and best have already left for a better life now step in and help out? Of course not - just like the Balkans there is a long historic neurosis of Islamic invasion and conquest along the northern Med shores and Iberia.