At least 3,740 refugees and migrants have perished in the Mediterranean so far this year, nearly matching the death toll for all of 2015 when three times as many people took to the seas, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.



UNHCR spokesman William Spindler voiced alarm at the high death toll among 327,800 people crossing this year, against 3,771 who died among more than one million last year.



"This is by far the worse we ever have seen in the Mediterranean," Spindler told a news briefing in Geneva. "We can say the death rate has increased three-fold."