WASHINGTON — (CNN) The number of refugees who have entered Europe by sea and land this year has passed 1 million, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday.
The latest updates for so-called “irregular arrivals” into Europe in 2015 as of Monday put the total number at 1,005,504, according to the organization.
The vast majority — 971,289 — have come by sea, according to the figures. Another 34,215 have traveled over land.
Among those traveling by sea, 3,695 are known to have drowned or remain missing as they attempted to cross the sea on unseaworthy boats, according to IOM figures.
The IOM’s director general William Lacy Swing has called the Mediterranean “the deadliest route for migrants on our planet.” The 3,279 people who lost their lives attempting to cross it in 2014 accounted for 65% of all migrant deaths that year.
By contrast, there have been 6,029 deaths between 1998 and 2013 along the second-deadliest border, the U.S.-Mexico border, the organization said.
The number of migrants entering Europe by crossing the Mediterranean in 2014 was 219,000, according to the United Nations.
Deaths are also commonplace along land routes into Europe. In August, Austrian authorities found the bodies of 71 migrants, believed to be from Syria, who had suffocated in a truck abandoned along a highway.
The numbers of migrants into Europe have exploded in 2015 as an unprecedented surge of humanity has fled wars, persecution and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
More than 4 million Syrians have fled four years of civil war, creating the worst refugee crisis seen in 25 years, according to the United Nations.
The overwhelming majority of migrants — 821,008, or 81.6% — arrive in Europe in Greece, the IOM says. The second-highest number of arrivals — 150,317 — were in Italy, with the remainder in Bulgaria, Spain, Cyprus and Malta, in that order.
According to an IOM statement released earlier this month, the top five nationalities arriving in Greece were from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Albania.
The top five nationalities arriving in Italy were Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, the IOM said, citing figures from the Italian Interior Ministry.
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2015 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (PHOTO: CNN)
