The number of refugees who arrived on Europe's shores plunged by nearly two-thirds last year, but the number of those who died on the often perilous journey in the Mediterranean Sea rose sharply, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the EU border agency Frontex has said.
About 364,000 people seeking work or refugee protection crossed the sea between January and December, compared to more than one million in 2015, Frontex said in a statement on Friday.
A sharp drop in arrivals to Greece outweighed record migration to Italy, it said.
The decrease was largely owing to a Turkey-EU deal whereby Ankara took back migrants who crossed by sea to the Greek islands and the EU resettled Syrian refugees living in Turkey. [...]
The trend shows that the central Mediterranean route linking the Sahara region to Southern Europe still operates at full capacity despite European efforts to stem the flow, IOM analysts said.
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