The Turkish coastguard recovered the bodies from the wooden boat, which had sailed from northwest Turkey’s seaside town of Ayvalik headed for the Greek island of Lesbos, the Turkish news agency said.
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Meanwhile, about 400,000 people have illegally entered Greece since the beginning of the year.
A top European Union official is pressing leaders of the 28 member states to live up to pledges to tackle the refugee emergency and says their credibility is at stake if they fail to act during Thursday’s summit meeting.
“The message for everybody is to follow the rules”, European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a news conference held with Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
African migrants are crowded into a room during a raid by…
Greece has opened its first reception centre on the island of Lesbos.
She adds “I would like to avoid that, but I don’t see how else we can protect ourselves”, particularly if neighboring countries close their borders with Croatia.
Just under 505,700 refugees have arrived in Europe by sea this year, most arriving in Greece, according to the group. We know how to winterise a building. Hungary has put up fences to stop the migrant influx.
There was no immediate information of the nationalities of the migrants.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacz says the police are prepared to enforce any decision immediately. Those deemed likely to qualify as refugees could then be relocated to other European Union countries to ease the burden on Greece and Italy and to prevent the migrants from continuing north in an uncontrolled manner.
Four more migrants – three of them children – died attempting to cross the Aegean Sea to reach safety in Europe, the Greek coastguard said on Saturday.
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“One of my colleagues used his personal weapon and fired”, Kostov said. The men claimed they were from Afghanistan but carried no identification documents.
