GENEVA, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) announced that the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach European soil this year passed the 300,000 mark on Tuesday.
Though lower than the 520,000 arrivals registered during the first nine months of last year, the figure still represents a significant increase from 2014, a year which saw 216,054 arrivals on the European Union territory.
UNHCR said that the pattern of arrivals in Italy have remained unchanged from last year, with some 130,000 refugees and migrants arriving in 2016 compared to 132,000 last year.
The situation in the other main country of arrival, Greece, has drastically changed however. Some 385,000 arrivals were recorded there by the end of September 2015, compared to 165,750 arrivals recorded so fa this year.
The nationalities of those reaching Greek and Italian shores are also different.
While those landing in Greece hail mainly from Syria (48 percent), Afghanistan (25 percent) and Iraq (15 percent), those reaching Italy originate from Nigeria (20 percent), Eritrea (12 percent) as well as Gambia, Guinea, Sudan, and Ivory Coast (7 percent each).
With total arrivals this year being 42 percent lower than during the same period last year, UNHCR reported that the number of deaths however has not seen the same decrease.
A total of 3,211 individuals have drowned or gone missing at sea since January, representing only a 15 percent drop from the casualty count of 3,771 for the whole of 2015.
If such numbers continue unabated, UNHCR warned that this year will be deadliest on record for maritime refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe.
