Figures released by the United Nations International Organisation for Migration (IOM) claim that since 2014 over 29,000 migrants have died trying to cross into Europe, doubtless the victims of ruthless smugglers leading them to their deaths while making a profit out of human suffering.

The harrowing statistics come from an IOM report as part of the Missing Migrants Project but researchers claim that the figure of over 29,000 may actually be an underestimate of the true number of deaths due to the difficulty in collecting exact numbers of those who have died trying to cross the sea to Europe.

The Central Mediterranean Route, which has seen a surge of activity this year, is the most dangerous to Europe as small migrant boats, often packed over capacity by people smugglers, leave from Libya and Tunisia trying to reach either Italy or Malta.

The report claims that nice January 2021, 2,836 migrants died in the Central Mediterranean while trying to reach European Union member states, the newspaper Ekathimerini reports.

An example of the cruelty of people smugglers was seen in June when a flimsy rubber boat provided by smugglers sank with dozens of people on board, leading to speculation that as many as thirty people, including women and children, were missing and possibly killed.

Even more horrific have been claims that people smugglers have tortured and abused migrants on the Central Mediterranean route in recent years, with a group of three smugglers from Guinea and Egypt sentenced to 20 years in prison each by an Italian court in 2020 for human trafficking, torture, sexual violence murder and extortionary kidnapping.

Migrants are often not safe from other dangerous migrants along the route either, with one case in 2017 seeing a Somali national named Osman M. convicted of raping, torturing and even murdering other migrants heading north.

The Somalian operated a migrant camp in Libya and was accused of deliberately starving others to death or simply leaving them to die of diseases that were left untreated. A total of 17 of his victims testified in an Italian court against him, including two young women who testified that the Somali raped them.

The IOM report noted that the second most dangerous route to Europe was the Canary Island route which sees boats set off from the western coast of Africa to reach the Spanish islands in the Atlantic ocean.

Since the start of 2021, a total of 1,500 or so people have died trying to reach the Canary Islands, with reports from earlier this year claiming that as many as one out of every ten women who try and make the voyage are led to their deaths by smugglers, double the number of men who die trying to undertake the dangerous journey.

The IOM also noted that a growing number of deaths were taking place in countries bordering the European Union, such as those on the Balkan migrant route.

Frontex, the European Union border agency, has noted that the Balkan route has seen a huge surge of activity this year, claiming an increase in illegal migrant arrivals along the route of 170 per cent compared to 2021.

“The Western Balkan route continues to be the most active migratory route into the EU with 19,160 detections in September, twice as many as a year ago. The high number of illegal border crossings can be attributed to repeated crossing attempts by migrants already present in the Western Balkans,” the agency said earlier this month.

An example of the killing of a migrant by people smugglers along the route was reported in August when  30-year-old Tapash Sarkar, a Bangladeshi national, was said to have been left in a remote area of Albania by smugglers after dying while walking in the summer heat for several days.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.