Hundreds of migrants struggle to board a train on September 11, 2015 at a train station in Nickelsdorf, at the Austrian side of the border between Hungary and Austria.
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At least 22 people have been killed, including four children, after a wooden boat carrying refugees capsized off Turkey’s southwest coast, authorities said Tuesday. The rest of them are spread throughout the provinces and cities of Turkey.
The worldwide Organization for Migration (IOM) is predicting more deaths in the Aegean Sea, between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey, which is the busiest route for migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe through the sea, amid EU’s “indecision” about how to handle the crisis.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said that despite the closing of the border in Europe, the surge of refugees from Turkey to Greece continues.
Earlier this month images of a dead toddler washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world, and prompted fierce debate about how best to manage the growing numbers of people trying to reach Europe. Some avoided the blockades by crossing fields and highways. The scavengers frequently find them 1st – the boat engine is their prize they usually chainsaw it off and cargo it on a truck in a matter of minutes, & probably resell it back to the mafia on the Turkish coast opposite.
“I don’t like the sea, I can’t swim”.
Turkey hosts some two million refugees.
Malik, 24, from the Kurdish area of Hassaga in Syria, says he had to sell his niece’s earrings for €150 (RM731) to top up the €2,250 per person his five-strong family paid the smugglers to get to Lesbos. Greece has increasingly struggled to cope as it bears the brunt of an estimated 464,000 people who have crossed the Mediterranean this year.
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Teams from Turkey’s Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Authority and gendarme squads were also dispatched to Bodrum marina upon the order of the Mugla Governor’s office.
