Mediterranean death toll tops record 5,000 this year, UN says

U.N. agencies says at least 90 people are missing and feared dead after two shipwrecks off Italy, raising the estimated death toll among migrants on the Mediterranean this year to at least 5,000 — a new record.

Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration said Friday that 63 survivors from the capsizing of a rubber dinghy said there were originally between 120 and 140 people on board.

An estimated 80 people survived another sinking of a rubber dinghy that came to light Thursday, and another 40 people were feared dead. He did not immediately have further details.

Also at the U.N. news briefing in Geneva, spokesman William Spindler of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' office reported that about 100 people were believed to have died in the recent Mediterranean incidents.

Two overcrowded dinghies capsized in the Strait of Sicily between Italy and Libya, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

"Those two incidents together appear to be the numbers that would bring this year's total to 5,000 [deaths], which is a new high in this crisis," IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a Geneva briefing. "This is the worst annual death toll ever seen," said UNHCR spokesman William Spindler.

The Mediterranean Sea routes, used so far this year by nearly 360,000 people seeking a new life in Europe, remains by far the world's deadliest, accounting for over 60 percent of the total number of migrant deaths, IOM said.

Libya is the main departure point for mostly African migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Smugglers arrange ill-equipped and overcrowded vessels that frequently break down or sink.

European Union interior ministers have been at odds over how to handle immigration, with heated discussions between states who want more burden sharing and those who oppose any kind of obligatory relocation.

EU states cannot agree how to handle them. Despite agreeing last year to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece, eastern European countries, including Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, have refused to take any in. Germany, which received most of those who made it to Europe last year, is backed by Sweden, Italy and Malta - which takes over the bloc's presidency in January for six months - in pushing for obligatory relocation in the asylum reform.