At least 22 people died when their boat capsized in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek island of Kos, according to local media.
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A further 249 passengers were rescued from the wooden boat which set off from the southwestern Turkish resort town of Datca for the nearby Greek island of Kos, the Turkish coast guard said.
It comes two days after 34 people drowned off a Greek island when their wooden boat sank.
Coastguards rescued 68 people from the waters and found another 30 from the first boat had made it to shore on Farmakonissi, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The accident occurred while Athens defended its handling of the massive refugee crisis and German chancellor Angela Merkel called on Greece to do more to protect the borders with Turkey.
“Greece is strictly applying European and global treaties without ignoring the humanity of the situation”, she said in Lesbos, the Greek island that has seen mounting numbers of refugees fleeing violence and rampant instability in the Middle East and Africa.
In Munich, the main point of entry for migrants to Germany, police said a total of 12,200 migrants arrived on Saturday and the flow is continuing into the city.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned that refugees could “find themselves moving around in legal limbo” and that the announcement of different border control measures by European states “only underlines the urgency of establishing a comprehensive European response“.
Greece’s debt crisis has severely limited the country’s ability to handle the arrivals.
Maurer also expressed his disquiet after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared he would use a newly-built fence to close the border with Serbia to migrants on Sept.15, and that “rebellious” migrants would be arrested.
Thousands of migrants and refugees, mostly Syrians, are still marching into Hungary from Serbia.
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The group was reportedly attempting to cross the Aegean Sea when it went down near the Datcha peninsula, not far from Bodrum, where Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up two weeks ago.
