refugees
Migrants drowned off Greece: children among victims
People are escorted by coastguard officers after the rescue operation in the port of Mytilene on Lesvos. photo
© Panagiotis Balaskas/AP/dpa
Two refugee boats capsize off the islands of Samos and Lesbos, five people die and 54 are rescued. Now it turns out: Four of the dead were children, one of them an eleven-month-old infant.
Five migrants died in two shipwrecks off the Greek islands of Samos and Lesbos, including four Children. 54 people could be saved. The dead off Lesvos were an 11-month-old baby, two girls aged eight and 11 and an eight-year-old boy, Shipping Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said. In addition, a woman died in the accident off Samos. Both boats had left the Turkish coast, it was said.
The accident off Samos happened at night. In video footage of the rescue operations released by the Coast Guard, people’s screams can be heard in the dark, and officials also show the successful resuscitation of an infant. In the accident off Samos, 37 people were on board the dinghy.
According to the coast guard, the accident off Lesbos happened early in the morning. There, officials were able to rescue 18 of the 22 migrants. In a statement, Varvitsiotis expressed “deep sadness at the loss of our fellow human beings” and said it was the despicable business of smugglers and smugglers who, out of greed for profit, continued to endanger people’s lives, even children’s lives.
Passengers are said to have destroyed the dinghy themselves
In the accident off the island of Samos, the passengers are said to have destroyed their inflatable boat themselves and caused it to capsize, according to the coast guard. It is unclear whether the perpetrators were migrants or smugglers.
Again and again, refugee boats between Turkey and Greece are caused to sink by the passengers themselves, for example by cutting the hoses of a rubber dinghy. In this way, the Greek Coast Guard cannot push the boat back into Turkish waters, but is obliged to rescue the people and take them to Greek islands or the mainland. The procedure is very risky as many migrants cannot swim.
Almost 16,000 people irregularly entered Greece
On Monday, apart from the two boats that crashed, 80 people arrived on Lesvos in other boats, a spokesman for the coast guard said. According to current figures from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, almost 16,000 people have entered Greece irregularly so far this year – around 12,000 over the sea to the Greek islands, around 4,000 over the land border from Turkey to northeast Greece. Over the past year, the organization recorded almost 13,000 arrivals.
Numbers of fatalities this year are not yet available; According to the UNHCR, 343 people lost their lives during the dangerous crossings in often rusty cutters and unseaworthy boats last year.