According to the following press review at least 19,144 people have died since 1988 along the european borders. Among them 8,822 were reported to be missing in the sea. The majority of them, 14,309 people, lost their life trying to cross the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe. And 2011 was the worst year ever, considering that during the year at least 2,352 people have died at the gates of Europe. These figures are based on the news found in the international press and are updated to the 3rd of October 2013. Here you can see our complete press review in Italian.In the Strait of Sicily 6,837 people died along the routes from Libya, Egypt and Tunisia to Malta and Italy, including the 5,086 who were reported to be missing; other 229 people drowned sailing from Algeria to Sardinia. Along the routes from Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria towards Spain, through the Strait of Gibraltar or off the Canary Islands, at least 4,899 people died, including 2,462 who went missing. Then 1,504 people died in the Aegean Sea, between Turkey and Greece - but also between Egypt and Greece and more recently between Greece and Italy - including 842 missing. Other 705 people died in the Adriatic and Ionian Sea, between Albania, Montenegro, Greece and Italy, including 314 missing. But the sea is not only crossed aboard makeshift boats: 160 men died asphyxiated or drowned while sailing, hidden inside registered ferries and cargo vessels .
The Sahara is a dangerous mandatory passage to the Mediterranean. People cross it on trucks or on off-road vehicles along the tracks between Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali on one side, and between Libya and Algeria on the other. Here at least 1,703 people have died since 1996. But according to the survivors, nearly every journey counts its victims. So the number of the victims keeps growing on a daily basis. The data includes also the victims of the collective deportations practiced by Tripoli, Algeri and Rabat Governments, accustomed to abandon groups of hundreds of migrants in open desert border areas.
In Libya serious abuses on migrants have also been recorded. There are no official data, but in 2006 Human rights watch and Afvic accused Tripoli of arbitrary arrests, beatings and tortures in the migrants' detention centers, three of which are financed by Italy. In september 2000 in Zawiyah, in the north-west part of the country, at least 560 foreigners were killed during racist attacks.
Travelling stowaways in the trucks 372 people were found dead. And 413 migrants drowned crossing border rivers, the majority in the Oder-Neisse, between Poland and Germany; in the Evros, between Turkey and Greece; in the Sava, between Croatia and Bosnia; and the Morava between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Then other 114 people froze to death while crossing on foot the icy mountain frontiers, especially in Turkey and Greece. Along the Greek border with Turkey there are still mine-fields long the Evros river. Here at least 92 people were killed by the mines while trying to enter Grece.
294 migrants were shot dead by border police: 38 of them were killed in Ceuta and Melilla , the Spanish enclaves in Morocco, 50 in The Gambia, 132 in Egypt and 32 in the eastern side of Turkey, along the Iranian and Iraqi borders. But few people were also killed by French, German, Spanish and Swiss policemen . Others died in Morocco and Libya. Ultimately 41 men were found dead hidden in the undercarriage of the aeroplanes, 33 people died in Calais, and under the trains in The Channel Tunnel trying to reach England, while other 12 people died under other trains in different borders, and 3 drowned crossing the Channel.