Refugee traffic rising along deadly route to Italy

When more than 800 people drowned last year on an overcrowded ship bound for Italy’s southernmost isle of Lampedusa, the European Union deployed a round-the-clock flotilla that has saved thousands of lives on what remains one of the world’s most perilous journeys.

[...] one year after Europe’s deadliest refugee disaster, humanitarian and security efforts off the lawless coast of Libya face a growing challenge to catch smugglers and bring asylum-seekers to safety.

Experts say crackdowns on migration at other European Union borders mean that the southern Mediterranean crossing plied daily by smugglers operating out of Libya already is busier now than it was 12 months ago.

Soda said about 350 people have died this year trying to cross the southern Mediterranean route, almost as many deaths over the same period as the far busier smuggling routes between Turkey and the eastern islands of Greece.

With the closure of the EU-Turkey border to migrants, we may learn once again how closing one route pushes people to another route, said Matteo de Bellis, an Amnesty International researcher who just completed a fact-finding mission to Italy’s main refugee processing center on Lampedusa.