Kos and other Greek islands are located only kilometres from the Turkish coast, turning them into an attractive destination for refugees seeking to enter the EU.
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Eighteen people drowned as the boat carrying them sank in the Aegean Sea off the Turkey’s southwestern coast late on Friday.
Greece is the main European gateway for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as so-called economic migrants fleeing poverty in eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
(AP Photo/Santi Palacios). Refugees and migrants arrive on a vessel of Frontex, European Border Protection Agency, after their rescue near the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday, Dec. 18, 2015.
European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday set an end-of-June deadline to agree on a new border and coastguard force to slow the influx of migrants across the 28-nation bloc’s porous external frontiers.
The boat carried Syrian, Pakistani and Iraqi refugees, Xinhua cited the report as saying.
Almost 600 people have died this year on the Mediterranean Sea, a route voyaged by 500,000 refugees, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Two people, suspected of organising the journey, are said to have been detained. Hundreds have drowned in the attempt to reach the safety of Europe.
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More than half a million migrants have crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece just this year.
