The Greek coast guard and other boats pulled some of the more than 70 survivors from the sea. Forty people managed to make it safely to shore, and authorities rescued one girl, AP reported.
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Just hours later, a second wooden vessel, carrying an unknown number of migrants sank off the islet of Kalolimnos, which is located south of Farmakonissi.
The coast guard said Friday it had recovered the bodies of 16 women, 11 children and seven men, while at least 26 people had been rescued. Coast guard vessels, a helicopter and private boats were searching for survivors.
ATHENS, Greece – The death toll in Europe’s migration crisis rose Friday when two overcrowded smuggling boats foundered off Greece and at least 46 people drowned – more than a third of them children – as European officials remained deeply divided on how to handle the influx.
Greece is the main entry point for hundreds of thousands of people seeking safety or a better life in Europe.
Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said human traffickers must not be allowed to profit from exploiting people desperate to reach Europe.
Brussels vowed to provide €3 billion (RM13.9 billion) as well as political concessions to Ankara in return for its cooperation in tackling Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee charity, said it’s important that migrants who don’t qualify for refugee status are returned home – a policy often hard to implement as emigrant-producing countries such as Pakistan resist repatriations.
In the first two weeks of 2016, more than 23,000 people arrived by sea in Greece and 50 have died, the IOM said.
Earlier this month, police have confiscated over 1,200 unsafe life jackets destined for use by migrants trying to reach Greece by sea, in a raid on an underground workshop that used Syrian underage labour in Izmir, a city on the Aegean coast.
While Germany accepted more than 1 million migrants and refugees in 2015, France has not opened its doors to large numbers of them. It has also offered renewed talks on joining the 28-nation bloc. It was not clear why the vessel capsized, but witnesses said strong winds were blowing at the time.
As of Thursday, all asylum seekers arriving in Greece must declare their final destination and this will be registered in their official documents, in order to continue their trek into Northern Europe, according to Greek police officials.
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Merkel said she raised thorny topics with Davutoglu such as media independence and the situation of the Kurds, but she said these issues were “very strongly outweighed” by common concerns including the refugee crisis and the battle against the Islamic State group.
