Refugee and migrant arrivals in Greece are expected to hit the 400,000 mark soon, despite adverse weather conditions ,the UN refugee agency said on Friday. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told journalists in Geneva that the continuing high rate of arrivals underlines the need for a fast implementation of the EU’s relocation programme, jointly with the establishment of robust facilities to receive, assist, register and screen all people arriving by sea. "These are steps needed for stabilizing the crisis," he said. Greece remains by far the largest single entry point for new sea arrivals in the Mediterranean, followed by Italy with 131,000 arrivals so far in 2015, according to the UNHCR spokesman. As of Friday morning, a total of 396,500 people have entered Greece by sea since the beginning of the year, more than 153,000 of them in September alone. The nine-month 2015 total compares to 43,500 such arrivals in Greece in all of 2014. Seventy percent are from Syria, followed by Afghanistan (18%) and Iraq (4%), the UN refugee agency said.
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