137,000 cross the Mediterranean
A record 137,000 people made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in the first half of 2015, most of them fleeing war, conflict and persecution, the United Nations said yesterday.
"Europe is living through a maritime refugee crisis of historic proportions," the UN refugee agency warned in a report.
The numbers flooding across the Mediterranean, often in rickety boats and at the mercy of human traffickers, have swelled 83 percent compared to the first six months of 2014, when 75,000 people made the journey, it said.
The situation is expected to deteriorate further as more clement summer weather allows ruthless people smugglers to dispatch more people.
Arrivals in the second half of 2014 were for instance nearly double those of the first half, UNHCR pointed out.
The immigration crisis is a burning issue for the EU, where member states have been wrangling over the best ways to tackle human trafficking and arguing over how to share the burden of helping new arrivals, many of them ill, starving and destitute.
The report hailed Brussel's decision to distribute 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum-seekers who have already arrived in Europe among EU members but called for greater solidarity between countries -- to help both the migrants and the states worst affected by the crisis.
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