Greece urgently needs help to cope with a six-fold rise in migrants arriving on its islands since last year, piling more pressure on its debt-ridden economy, the United Nations said yesterday.

An average of 600 migrants were arriving by sea each day, many of them fleeing poverty and conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya, at a time when the Athens government is facing its own economic crisis, said the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

The European Union needed to come to Greece’s aid as it “does not have the resources to handle an additional humanitarian crisis. Many of its own people are suffering,” UNHCR chief spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told journalists in Geneva.

Around 42,000 migrants arrived in often flimsy, overcrowded boats in Greece this year, six times the same period last year, the UNHCR said, part of a growing influx risking the crossing from North Africa to Europe. “The figures have increased dramatically, particularly in Greece ... We expect it to continue at least at this pace if not become even bigger,” Fleming said on her return from Greece.

An African immigrant tries to jump a fence into a ferry terminal in the western Greek town of Patras.

The numbers arriving so far this year almost equalled the total seen in all of 2014, she said. Most did not stay but carried on walking through Macedonia and Albania towards northern Europe, she added.

Many of Greece’s Aegean islands including Kos did not have the services, food supplies and drinking water to cope with the migrants, she said.

Greece delayed repayment of an IMF loan yesterday and a deputy minister said the government might call snap elections if its international creditors did not soften their terms for more aid.

The lenders have demanded tax hikes, privatisations and pension reform in exchange for aid to save Greece from bankruptcy. But the proposal has triggered fury in Greece’s ruling Syriza party, which says Greece cannot take more cuts and austerity.

Nearly 90,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, double the rate of 2014, while at least 1,850 drowned or are missing at sea, according to the UNHCR.

The total includes 46,500 who have arrived in Italy.