Geneva (EFE).- At least 26,924 migrants have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean since 2014, almost half of the 56,000 registered victims worldwide.
This is how the statistics of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) remember it, in the week in which one of the worst shipwrecks on the Greek coasts has been experienced.
According to the Missing Migrants Project, which IOM, one of the United Nations agencies, has maintained since 2014, the Mediterranean route remains the most dangerous, above those in Africa (12,646 victims), America (7,846), and East Asia (5,528). , the Middle East (2,136) and the rest of Europe (1,013).
More than 3,000 dead on the route to Spain
Within the Mediterranean, the most dangerous route is the central one (from the coasts of Libya, Tunisia and countries close to Malta or Italy), with 21,287 deaths and disappearances in nine years, followed by the western one (mainly towards Spain), with 3,331 victims. .
In third place is the eastern one, in which the main destination is Greece and the victims since 2014 are 2,292, according to data that still do not take into account the at least 79 deaths in the disaster on Wednesday.
So far this year on the Mediterranean routes there have been at least 1,166 deaths and disappearances, a figure that raises fears that by the end of the year figures similar to those of last year (2,406 victims) will be reached, while the deadliest year It was 2016, with at least 5,136 dead and missing.
April, a tragic month
This year, 2023, the month of April has been especially high in claims, in which there were more than 500 deaths and missing persons in the Mediterranean, a figure that had not been reached in any month since June 2018.
According to data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), in the first four months of 2023 there were 7,856 attempts to enter the EU illegally through the eastern Mediterranean, mainly Greek borders.
Of these attempts, 1,537 corresponded to Syrian migrants, the most frequent nationality, followed by people from Afghanistan (957), Palestine (937), Nigeria (558) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (524), always according to data from the European customs.