Refugees and migrants call for help as their boat is ready to sink off the Greek island of Lesbos island while crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey on Friday.
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Greek officials said that 19 people died and 138 were rescued near Kalymnos Thursday night and Friday. Local fishermen and volunteers rescued refugees from a sinking boat off the Greek island of Lesbos in the early hours of Friday morning.
Despite worsening weather at the onset of winter that has made the already hazardous sea voyage even more risky, a record 48,000 refugees and migrants arrived last week in Greece, the worldwide Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Rescue workers were able to pull 272 people out of the water, but 29 lost their lives, many of them children.
A man marching down the street shot and killed three people on Saturday, before being fatally shot in a gunbattle with police, authorities and witnesses said.
Meanwhile, authorities raised to 16 the number of deaths from another migrant ship disaster off the island of Lesbos on Wednesday.
Another 144 people were rescued, officials said. More than a third of that number has come in October alone.
Two refugees after arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos on September 30, 2015.
There has been a sharp spike in the numbers of migrants and refugees setting out from Turkey for the European Union in search of better lives.
The rescue was one of three carried out as the weather took a turn for the worse in the sea corridor off the Greek coast.
There were yet more drownings as the prime minister spoke – four young children died and two more were missing yesterday after boats carrying refugees capsized off the Turkish coast.
“I feel ashamed of Europe’s inability to effectively address this human drama, and of the level of debate… where everyone tries to shift responsibility to someone else”, Tsipras said.
Fishing boats and coast guard vessels ferried survivors from the larger sunken boat to the port village Molyvos on Lesbos, a few miles away from the Turkish mainland.
More than 100 children and infants have drowned in Greek waters over the past two months.
“They took my money”, he said, referring to payments to smugglers and an incident in eastern Turkey when he said he was robbed.
The Aegean Sea lies between Turkey and Greece.
“I have seen people with amputated legs from the bombings travel on boats, a child who recently had surgery traveling by boat”, he said. The island is the first stop in Europe for many refugees who are fleeing crisis in places like Afganistan and Syria.
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“The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe”, he said, dismissing Western shock at the children’s deaths as “crocodile tears”.
