A monthly record number of refugees and migrants traveled by sea to Europe in October, almost as many as arrived in all of 2014, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Monday.
A record 218,394 refugees went to Europe by sea last month, up from 172,843 in September, said UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards, reported Reuters.
"That makes it the highest total for any month to date and roughly the same as the entire total for 2014," said Edwards. The UNHCR estimates that 219,000 people arrived in Europe by sea in 2014.
"It also shows the just astonishing amount of arrivals in just a few days during the course of the month," said Edwards, according to Breitbart. "The month peaked at 10,006 (in Greece alone) on a single day on October 20."
Greece took in the vast majority of refugees in October, with 210,265 making their way through Turkey to the southeastern European country. In the past week alone, at least 70 people have drowned trying to make it to the Greek islands. Italy was next, taking in 8,129 refugees, according to the BBC.
Fifty-three percent of the refugees were Syrians fleeing the deadly four-year-long civil war, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced some 11 million. Afghans were the second largest refugee population, accounting for 18 percent of the total, according to Reuters.
In all, the U.N. said 744,175 people have arrived on Europe's shores, most on Greek islands such as Lesbos and Samos. Nearly 3,500 are thought to have died or gone missing.
Germany is expecting at least 800,000 asylum seekers this year, with some estimates as high as 1.5 million, more than four times the number who arrived in 2014.
The number of refugees reaching Europe is still much less than the number who have gone to countries neighboring Syria. More than two million have travelled to Turkey, about one million to Lebanon and 600,000 to Jordan.
Across the pond in the United States, only 1,854 Syrian refugees had been admitted as of mid-October. President Barack Obama said the U.S. will accept at least 10,000 in 2015. Syrians only accounted for about 2 percent of the 70,000 refugees admitted during the last fiscal year. Most came from Myanmar, Iraq and Somalia, according to the New York Times.
