2015 Migrant, Refugee Arrivals in EU Close to One Million - IOM

A picture made available on Dec. 10, 2015 shows a light beam from Turkish Coastal Guard ship UMUT pointed at a boat carrying Syrian migrants as they try to reach the Greek Aegean island of Chios, in Cesme district, Turkey, Dec. 9, 2015.

A total of 990,671 migrants and refugees have entered Europe in 2015 from Africa and the Middle East by a combination of irregular land and sea routes, the International organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday.

“With about two weeks remaining on the calendar, it is virtually certain 2015’s total will surpass the one million mark, which would be nearly five times 2014’s total,” the IOM said in a statement.

The number of arrivals by land into Greece and Bulgaria from Turkey totalled 34,215 or less than 3% of the year’s total irregular arrivals.

Arrivals in Bulgaria totalled 29,959, all of them by land, IOM data showed.

The IOM put at 956,456 the estimated total number of arrivals in Greece, Italy, Spain Malta and Cyprus across the Mediterranean through 17 December.

Sea fatalities totalled 3,695.

“We should add that 706 deaths of migrants and refugees crossing from Turkey to Greece are more fatalities than occurred in the entire Mediterranean in all of 2013, the year this emergency began to attract international attention,” IOM said.

 

 

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