The Director-General of the United Nations Organization for Migration, Antonio Vitorino , announced on Wednesday that the first quarter of this year witnessed the largest number of migration victims across the Mediterranean since 2017, explaining that 441 migrants died on these crossing trips.

Vitorino said that the period between January and March 2023 saw the highest number of victims recorded in migrant crossings across the Mediterranean since 2017.

"The ongoing humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is unbearable," he added.

He pointed to "more than twenty thousand deaths on this road since 2014," stressing, "I fear that the death of these people will become a normal matter."