Record number of migrants expected to drown in Mediterranean this year

In the first quarter of 2015, nearly 500 migrants have drowned, ten times as many as in the same period of 2014, leading to fears of a record death rate this year

A motor boat from the Italian frigate Grecale approaches a boat overcrowded with migrants in the Mediterranean. Photograph: Italian Navy

A record number of migrants will drown in the Mediterranean this year if the current death rate remains unchecked, after 10 times as many migrants lost their lives during the first three months of 2015 as during the equivalent period in 2014.

At least 486 asylum seekers have drowned in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, compared with 46 in the first three months of 2014, according to preliminary figures supplied to the Guardian by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The death toll has risen sharply even though the number of migrants arriving in Europe by sea has remained roughly the same. It suggests that the EU’s decision not to create a like-for-like replacement of Mare Nostrum, a full-scale Italian rescue operation that folded last October, has neither curbed the number of attempts to cross the sea, nor fatalities along the way.
The rate of deaths far outstrips the rate in early 2014, leading to fears that the total number of drownings in 2015 will eventually surpass last year’s total of 3,419, which was itself a record. A quarter of the way into the year, the 2015 death toll has already almost overtaken the total annual estimates from 2012 and 2013, which respectively reached 500 and 600.