Joel Millman News

At least 34 migrants have died in a shipwreck in the western Mediterranean, which 26 people survived, the U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday, citing the Moroccan navy and a Spanish aid agency.Joel Millman, spokesman of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told Reuters, "The boat was adrift since Sunday with 60 people aboard. At least 34 have drowned, it looks like there were 26 survivors."The information came from the Moroccan navy and a Spanish non-governmental organisation Caminando Fronteras, he said.A Moroccan official, asking not to be named, said 11 bodies had been recovered, adding that the dead were all migrants, not Moroccan nationals. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Zakia Abdennebi; editing by William Maclean)

The International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday that 21 migrants were missing, and had probably drowned, after two boats, a rubber dinghy and a wooden boat, set off from Libya for Italy and had to be rescued.   IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva that all 132 people on the rubber dinghy had been rescued, but 21 were missing from the 51 on the wooden boat, and two dead infants had reportedly been discovered on board, bringing the likely death toll to 23.   Reporting by Tom Miles

Twenty-two Ethiopian migrants are missing after being dumped in the sea off Yemen, the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday. IOM spokesman Joel Millman said the missing people were on one of four boats that brought 602 Ethiopian men and women to the coast of Yemen's Shabwa governorate in the past 24 hours. "We understand that passengers on the boat had been dropped into deep water and forced to swim to shore. No bodies have been recovered but 22 remain unaccounted for," Millman told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva. He gave no further details of the incident. "Despite the difficult security problems in Yemen, it's still a migrant transit point and we're still hearing about these reports pretty frequently," he said.

Five migrants are believed to have died when a rubber boat sank off the coast of Libya on Tuesday, aid groups said on Friday, adding that reports earlier this week that many more had been killed were wrong. Probably still in shock after he was taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa, a 16-year-old Gambian boy told humanitarian workers on Wednesday he was the only survivor of the wreck, Cecile Pouilly, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR, told reporters. When 140 others disembarked at a different port on Thursday, several identified the boy as having been on the same boat. "So we have pretty good information that this tragedy didn't occur as was initially reported," said Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration.

At least 219 migrants and refugees are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean already this year, more than double than during the same period a year ago, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. Following interviews with four survivors of a weekend shipwreck, the agency said nearly 180 people were feared to have been aboard a boat that capsized off the coast of Libya, not 110 as earlier thought. "So it's almost twice the number of casualties which brings the year total already two weeks into the year to 219 deaths on the Mediterranean," IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a news briefing in Geneva. The Italian coastguard said the boat had not been found so there was no way to determine the number of passengers. Survivors were taken to Sicily on Monday.

The death toll on the Mediterranean has nearly matched that of all last year, with more than 3,740 migrants and refugees having drowned on their way to Europe, and perilous winter months still to come, aid agencies said on Tuesday. Smugglers are now sending thousands of people on flimsy inflatable rafts from Libya to Italy in mass embarkations, perhaps to lower their own risks of being caught, but also complicating the work of rescue teams, they said. At least 3,740 people have perished so far…

The bodies of 120 migrants believed to have been trying to reach Italy by boat from Libya have been found off the Libyan coast over the past 10 days, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. "We are getting this information from Libyan authorities that we are collaborating with," said IOM spokesman Joel Millman. The bodies had been discovered near Sabratha and had not come from previously known shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. Mainly African migrants are taking often unseaworthy boats from Libya to Italy, gateway to Europe. Nearly 8,000 were rescued at sea between Friday to Monday on that central Mediterranean route, Millman told a briefing.

Some 320 migrants and refugees are now feared to have drowned in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Crete last week, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday, citing survivors' testimony. The Greek coastguard said on Saturday that the migrants who survived had told authorities their boat set sail from Egypt with about 350 people. On Friday, Greek authorities said 340 people were rescued and nine bodies had been recovered about 75 nautical miles off southern Crete. But survivors taken to the port of Augusta, Italy, who were interviewed by IOM staff reported that the vessel was carrying nearly twice the presumed number of passengers. "We learned from survivors in Italy, in Augusta, that 648 or 650 men, women and children were on that ship.

An estimated 113 people died in four shipwrecks between Libya and Italy at the weekend as the crossing becomes the preferred sea route for migrants to Europe, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. With the closing of land routes in the Balkans and a recent deal under which Greece sends migrants back to Turkey, Italian officials have said they expect more people to try to make this longer and much more dangerous crossing from Libya. In one of four incidents, an Italian merchant ship rescued 26 people off the coast of Libya in rough seas and others were feared missing, Italy's Coast Guard said on Saturday.

Ten times as many migrants and refugees arrived in Europe by sea in the first six weeks of the year as in the same period of 2015, and the number of deaths also soared, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday. The number of arrivals topped 76,000, and the number of deaths shot up to 409 on Mediterranean routes from 69 in the first six weeks of 2015, it said. The IOM also said it expected no fall in the number of arrivals in Europe and predicted that next month Greece would receive its one millionth arrival since the migrant crisis began. More than 1.1 million people fleeing poverty, war and repression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa reached Europe's shores last year, most of them heading for Germany.

Twelve bodies were found on Turkey's western coast and 26 people were rescued on Tuesday after a boat carrying migrants bound for Greece capsized, the Turkish coastguard said in a statement. Responding to a distress signal sent in the early morning near Izmir, the coastguard found the bodies of at least five children according to Dogan News Agency. The coastguard said a helicopter and three boats were still searching for others. All of those who died, which also included one pregnant woman, came from Iraq and had tried to sail from Aliaga in Izmir province to the Greek island of Lesbos, according to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. On Wednesday…

Hard for us to help if no one in charge, UNHCR says; 160,000 refugees, migrants have reached Greece this year. Greece must show "much more leadership" to tackle an escalating crisis in which 160,000 refugees and migrants have reached its shores so far this year, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Clashes erupted last week on the overwhelmed Greek island of Kos between desperate people, mainly fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, who come on small boats from nearby Turkey only to find dire conditions. "The pace of arrivals have been steadily increasing in recent weeks. More refugees and migrants arrived in Greece during the month of July - 50,242 - than during the whole of last year," William Spindler of the U.N.

Around 2,700 migrants were rescued from 13 boats near the coast of Libya on Wednesday, Italy's coastguard said. A German navy vessel and a search and rescue ship deployed by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres participated in the rescues along with the Italian navy and coastguard. A spokeswoman for the Italian coastguard said the rescues had all been carried out in an area around 35 miles (55 km) from the coast of Libya. An estimated 150,000 migrants have reached Europe by sea so far in 2015, most of them in Greece and Italy, the International Organization for Migration said. More than 1,900 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean, twice the toll during the same period last year, said spokesman Joel Millman.

Island communities unable to cope with migrant flow, UN says. The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that Greece urgently needed help to cope with 1,000 migrants arriving each day and called on the European Union (EU) to step in before the humanitarian situation deteriorates further. More than 77,000 people have arrived by sea to Greece so far this year, more than 60 percent of them Syrians, with others fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia, it said. "The volatile economic situation, combined with the increasing numbers of new arrivals, is putting severe strain on small island communities," William Spindler of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a briefing.

Hundreds of people desperate to be rescued from a packed migrant boat in the Mediterranean pushed to one side when they saw a ship approach, capsizing the craft and pitching everyone into the sea where hundreds died, an official said on Wednesday. Survivors' accounts suggested at least 500 people were on the boat when it sank on Monday evening, some 120 km (75 miles) off the Italian island of Lampedusa. With 145 people rescued that leaves at least 350 unaccounted for, probably drowned. Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said: "According to testimonies, at least one-third of the passengers were women and children. At the time of the shipwreck, they were staying in the hull of the boat to be better protected from the cold.

Boat arrivals up more than 40 pct this year; this year 600 dead vs 100 in same period last year. With migration across the Mediterranean surging, the European Union's largest border operation is bracing for a record year of arrivals by sea, especially as summer brings calm waters between Italy and Libya. Off the eastern coast of Sicily earlier this week, the 18-member crew of the Icelandic coast guard vessel Tyr -- named after a Nordic god of war -- conducted rescue drills in seas more familiar in Greek mythology, preparing for the worst. Though the United Nations refugee agency has criticised the mission, known as Triton, because its mandate is not search and rescue but border control with patrols near the Italian coast, the EU border agency Frontex says it is saving lives.

Inadequate naval patrols means ever more migrants from Africa and the Middle East will die trying to cross the Mediterranean, aid agencies warned on Tuesday, as Italy appealed for a "more vigorous" European response to tackle the crisis. The death toll in the Mediterranean since the start of the year stands at 50 against just 12 in the same period in 2014. In the latest tragedy involving migrants, 29 people died of hypothermia on Monday on the exposed deck of a small Italian naval vessel after it rescued them in rough seas from a dinghy adrift near Libya.