The city of Bodrum, a magnet for wealthy tourists from Turkey and around the world, is these days drawing plenty of other visitors- migrants fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa and seeking a better life in Europe, a continent so close they can nearly reach out and touch it from the Bodrum peninsula’s many beaches. “At least 40 dead”, the Italian navy said on Twitter, while the Corriere della Sera newspaper said those who died were found in the hold of the vessel, apparently having suffocated below deck.
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“We were faced with a very emotional scene”, Commander Massimo Tozzi told the Italian news agency AGI, describing how some bodies were floating on the water.
The 312 survivors – including 45 women and three children – were transferred to the Norwegian vessel Siem Pilot.
Most have been sleeping rough since crossing from nearby Turkey, often in flimsy boats. If the boat capsizes, they risk drowning, and that’s not all, they could also be killed by diesel fumes.
Boatloads of migrants arriving every day had triggered a “humanitarian crisis within the economic crisis”, Tsipras said after a meeting with ministers.
More than 2,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean this year, in what EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos called the “worst refugee crisis since the Second World War”.
Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of the emergency.
Syrian refugees have boarded a ship on the Greek island of Kos for processing, hours after other migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran clashed as they waited for their own paperwork.
“We don’t know where to go”.
Part of the reason is the sheer magnitude of the wave of migrants and refugees, which the Greek government has said is too much for such a crisis-ridden country – let alone an island such as Kos – to handle.
Earlier this week, police beat back migrants with truncheons and sprayed them with fire extinguishers to prevent a stampede as mostly Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers were being relocated to a local football stadium after camping along roads and beaches for weeks.
“What is popular and unpopular has to do with domestic politics, but we must not give in to populism and xenophobia”.
Mrs Miller has already made trips to Turkey to help refugees fleeing in terror from ISIS.
Reuters reports at least one man was being kicked while lying on the ground and many others had blood on their faces. “They apologised and said sorry, ‘we just wanted to scare you away, ‘” he told AFP.
Some 102,000 migrants have arrived on Italy’s shores since the start of the year while almost 135,000 have arrived in Greece.
Daniel Esdras, who heads the global Organization for Migration’s office in Greece said, “Having so many people in a small island, things are bound to get tough”.
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Elsewhere in Europe, commotion erupted in Macedonia, as hundreds of migrants fought to board a train for Serbia, which borders Hungary, an EU member state.
