Forty people scrambled to shore, one girl was rescued, but six children and one woman died.
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More than a million migrants arrived in Europe illegally past year. An air and sea rescue operation was launched, with coast guard vessels assisted by a Greek air force Super Puma helicopter and private boats. Latest confirmed figures from the International Organisation for Migration put the number of deaths in January alone at 113, a figure that included 15 of the latest 44 deaths.
On Thursday at least 12 people, including children, drowned off the Turkish coast as their boat tried to reach Greece.
A search was under way for the others, the port police said.
Shortly after that, a wooden sailboat sank near another Greek island, Kalolimnos, and coast guard described a “large-scale rescue” operation underway in the area.
The UN refugee agency said daily arrivals on the Greek islands have surged to more than 3,000 in the past two days, and it cited refugee testimony that smugglers have recently halved their rates amid deteriorating weather conditions.
Dozens of refugees, including 17 children, have died in two shipwrecks off the coast of Greece.
After a joint cabinet meeting in Berlin, the German and Turkish leaders reaffirmed their commitment to tackling the crisis. The refugee crisis has left governments scrambling for solutions.
“Europe can’t take in huge masses of foreign people in an unlimited, uncontrolled manner”, he said, adding that, for Hungary, “the best migrant is the migrant who does not come”.
One survivor said the vessel’s engine failed at about 3am, five hours after it departed from Izmir in Turkey.
In the first incident off Kalolimnos the Coast Guard has so far recovered 34 dead bodies- among them the eleven children- and rescued 26 people. “They couldn’t swim”, Michalis, a local fisherman, told Reuters.
Turkey has a special relationship with Germany as the EU’s biggest economy is not only home to around three million people with Turkish roots, but is also its biggest trading partner.
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“Instead of focusing on building fences and tightening border controls, we are calling on European leaders to take action to ensure no more children lose their lives senselessly”, she said.
