At least 34 people, including 11 children, drowned when their wooden vessel sank off a Greek island close to Turkey on Friday, the Greek coastguard said, in what was thought to be one of the worst accidents involving migrants in months.
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A search was under way for the others, the port police said, AFP reported.
The 26 survivors reported that dozens of people had been on the boat.
But Hungary’s prime minister, who previous year built fences on his nation’s borders with Serbia and Croatia to stop migrants from coming in, praised Austria for setting a cap this week on the numbers of refugees it will take.
The International Organization for Migration said the deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean already make this “the deadliest January on record”.
Fleeing war, thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short but precarious journey from Turkey to Greece’s islands, from which most continue to mainland Greece and northward into wealthier western Europe.
More than 40 passengers made it to the shore including a young girl, but authorities recovered seven bodies from the sea. The coastguard recovered 14 bodies – two children, nine women and three men.
In a separate incident overnight, eight people drowned off the island of Farmakonisi.
At least 12 migrants were killed and several more went missing Thursday when their boat sank while trying to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to European Union member Greece, Turkish media reports said.
In the sinking at Farmakonisi, another small island also close to the Turkish coast, six children and two women drowned when their wooden boat crashed on rocks shortly after midnight.
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One survivor told APTN that the vessel’s engine failed about 3 a.m., five hours after they departed from Izmir in Turkey. Speaking at a reception centre on the island of Kalymnos, he said about 80 people on board had paid 2,500 USA dollars (£1,740) each for a berth, with half that sum for children. “There must have been a lot of people on board”.
