Migrants are seen standing in Lampedusa’s migrant reception heart on Sept. 14. The reception heart in Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa has been overwhelmed in latest weeks with transferring to the mainland 1000’s of migrants arriving on small, flimsy boats.

Valeria Ferraro/AP

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Valeria Ferraro/AP

Migrants are seen standing in Lampedusa’s migrant reception heart on Sept. 14. The reception heart in Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa has been overwhelmed in latest weeks with transferring to the mainland 1000’s of migrants arriving on small, flimsy boats.

Valeria Ferraro/AP

More than 2,500 migrants died or went lacking this 12 months whereas attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe, in accordance with the United Nations.

It’s a startling two-thirds enhance from final 12 months’s toll of 1,680 individuals in the identical interval, and comes as Europe sees an enormous inflow of migrants making the perilous journey in numbers not seen in years.

Between January and Sept. 24, about 186,000 individuals arrived by sea in southern Europe, touchdown in Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta, Ruven Menikdiwela, director of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Office in New York, told the U.N.’s Security Council on Thursday. Italy has obtained nearly all of these arrivals, with the variety of migrants arriving accelerating in latest months — over 130,000 migrants, greater than double the quantity on the finish of June and an 83% enhance in comparison with the identical interval final 12 months.

Arriving migrants have overwhelmed Lampedusa, a small Italian island that serves as a fundamental level of entry from North Africa into Europe that is turn into a latest flashpoint within the migration disaster. This month, about 12,000 individuals — greater than twice the island’s inhabitants — landed there inside a single week.

“The situation on Lampedusa is cause for serious concern,” Menikdiwela mentioned.

The U.N. consultant expressed gratitude for the efforts made by native authorities on Lampedusa, together with their work to “quickly decongest” the island.

But, she added, Italy cannot be left alone in responding to the wants of arriving migrants, calling on assist from different nations.

The U.N.’s refugee commissioner “has repeatedly called for the establishment of an agreed regional disembarkation and redistribution mechanism for people who arrive by sea, in a spirit of responsibility sharing and solidarity with front-line states,” she mentioned.

Some 102,000 of the migrants who tried to cross into Europe this 12 months got here from Tunisia; 45,000 traveled from Libya. Many die lengthy earlier than reaching sea waters as they journey from sub-Saharan Africa to North African embarkation factors alongside a number of the world’s most harmful land routes, Menikdiwela famous. Refugees and migrants who journey these routes “risk death and gross human rights violations at every step,” she mentioned.

As of June, the variety of migrants arriving in Europe was much like one other disaster interval, from 2015 to 2017, Flavio di Giacomo, a spokesperson for UN’s International Organization for Migration, previously told NPR.

Menikdiwela additionally emphasised the necessity for a “panoramic approach” that features addressing the foundation causes of the migration actions in nations of origin and particular measures akin to rising search-and-rescue efforts and simpler prosecution of smugglers and traffickers.

The U.N.’s warnings and suggestions got here on the identical day leaders of the European Union met in Brussels to debate migration reforms, a longstanding concern among the many 27-nation bloc. EU inside ministers are trying to draw up an agreement on a pact that may make clear asylum guidelines and kind a “solidarity” plan that may assist out front-line member states share a number of the burden of processing migrants.