They keep coming — and keep dying.
Just two weeks ago, another 55 migrants trying to reach Europe drowned off the coast of Libya when their rubber dinghy sank. Two days earlier, 33 people died in four different capsizes near the Italian island of Lampedusa. A few days before that, dozens of bodies washed up on a beach near Tripoli. Each of these men, women or children could have told a tale of unimaginable sorrow.
The running tally of migrant drownings for the year was 661 at the time of this writing, according to the International Organization for Migration. That makes about 20,000 such deaths since 2014. And this number only counts fatalities on the central Mediterranean route from Africa to the European Union, not the refugees who perished on the Aegean or other passages.