The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regretted this Thursday the death of dozens of migrants, including four girls, in two shipwrecks that occurred the previous day off the coasts of Greece and Italy.
“Our colleagues at UNHCR are deeply saddened by the news of a shipwreck that occurred yesterday in the Aegean Sea, in which three girls between the ages of 5 and 10 were reported dead off the Greek island of Chios,” he said. the spokesman for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, during a press conference.
Likewise, they have also been distressed by the other “terrible shipwreck” near the Italian island of Lampedusa, where the Italian coast guard has confirmed the death of nine people, including a girl.
“This is a reminder of the dangers that refugees and migrants face every day at the hands of traffickers in their search for a better life,” Dujarric added.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) states on its website that so far this year around 475 people have died or been reported missing when trying to complete the journey through one of the routes in the Mediterranean Sea. A figure that in 2023 rose to more than 3,100, data similar to that of 2017, after five years below the barrier of 2,500 victims.
According to their data, the Central Mediterranean region is the deadliest of the routes, where at least 385 people have already died or disappeared, eleven of them minors, so far this year.
