While the situation is still developing, at least 78 people are known to have drowned in the Mediterranean after an overcrowded fishing boat capsized off the coast of Greece. Roughly 750 migrants are thought to have been on board the stricken vessel, with hundreds still missing and 104 reported by authorities as rescued.

The incident highlights just how dangerous crossing the Mediterranean Sea is for migrants, who often have to resort to traveling in overloaded boats lacking equipment and supplies while being vulnerable to any bad weather or other incidents along the way. Before the latest event, The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants website counted 1,166 migrants who had died or gone missing in the Mediterranean in 2023 (up to June 9). Annual figures have been rising since 2020.

More than 2,400 migrants died in the Mediterranean in 2022 as this crisis is once more intensified. In 2020, deaths (and movement on the route) had reached a low point of 1,449 deaths and missing persons. In 2016, a high of 5,136 people lost their lives in this way. Back then, both the Central Mediterranean crossing to Italy and the Eastern crossing to Greece were used by a high number of migrants as the Syrian civil war caused people to flee and Africans, for example from Nigeria and Eritrea, undertook the arduous journey north to cross the central Mediterranean.

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