At least five migrants including three children, died today after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said.
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The accident raised the total death toll from 5 separate incidents in the eastern Aegean Sea Wednesday to 11, as thousands of people continued to head to the Greek islands in frail boats from Turkey in stormy weather.
More than 4,000 migrants and refugees have had to be rescued by the Greek Coast Guard off the shores of Lesbos this month alone.
“We have warned for weeks that an already bad situation could get even worse if desperate refugees and migrants must continue to resort to smugglers who send them out to sea despite the worsening weather”, said Alessandra Morelli, UNHCR’s senior operations coordinator for Greece.
Slovenian police say more than 100,000 refugees have entered the country in less than two weeks.
Two children and a man also died off the island of Samos, while 51 people on the same boat were rescued.
Greece’s merchant marine minister, Thodoros Dritsas, said: “The coastguard’s admirable, constant struggle to rescue refugees at sea is, unfortunately, tending of late to turn into a constant and agonising operation to locate and recover drowned refugees”.
Approximately 5,000 refugees from Mytilene arrived early on Thursday at Pirae port. More specifically, 1,995 refugees disembarked from “Blue Star Patmos”, 1,359 disembarked from “Blue Star 1”, 867 from “Nisos Rhodos” and 687 from “Nisos Mykonos”.
Port police said it was not clear how many people might be in the water, with survivors giving a confusing picture of the number of people who were on the boat that capsized off Lesbos.
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Asylum-seekers hoping to reach Western Europe turned to crossing Slovenia after Hungary closed its border with Croatia with a barbed-wire fence. Another 242 people were saved in a dramatic rescue Thursday night. Eighteen children were taken to hospital, with three reported to be in a serious condition.
