The boat was transferring refugees from the Turkish province of Canakkale to the Greek island of Lesbos.
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“There have been (no fatalities) so far today, thank God”, a Greek coast guard spokeswoman said on customary condition of anonymity.
He told UTV he now wants to get a boat and help refugees making the treacherous journey from Turkey to Greece.
Following Monday’s meeting, the European Union interior ministers also urged Italy and Greece, both countries at the front lines of the migrant flow, to speed up the processing of new arrivals so that they could then be relocated to other European Union countries.
The boat hit rocks shortly after leaving Ayvacik but continued on its unsafe crossing toward Lesbos, said regional governor Hamza Erkal. “Humanity is watching from the sidelines”, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, there was no immediate information on their nationalities. “We can not let people die from the cold in the Balkans”.
The crisis worsened over the summer when hundreds of thousands more people fleeing wars, persecution and poverty mainly in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in Greece and the Balkans via Turkey.
More than 3,000 people have drowned among the almost 800,000 who have reached Europe this year, and the Greek coastguard said on Monday it had discovered over 300 hidden in a yacht that ran aground near the island of Lesbos.
Even with favorable seas, Greece’s coast guard and European Union border agency Frontex rescued a total of 429 migrants in seven separate rescue operations, authorities said.
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“Some member states will not be able to manage the burden much longer”, and have been closing their borders and shutting their doors to the flood of migrants, said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country now holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
