AlHijjah 21, 1435, Oct 15, 2014, SPA -- U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he had asked the European Union (EU) to grant legal entry to more Syrian refugees who are increasingly risking their lives by trying to reach Europe illegally by sea. Speaking on the sidelines of a Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, conference on the education of refugee children, Guterres said he had just returned "from Europe, from the European Council of Justice and Home Affairs, asking them for more Syrian refugees [to] also be able to come legally into Europe." "It breaks my heart to see Syrian families that have suffered already so much in their country to drown in the Mediterranean at the hands of smugglers," the top U.N. refugee official said. The U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) said last month that more than 700 people fleeing the Middle East and Africa may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean in September, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000.
