Eleven migrants, including six children, drown off Greece: coastguard

New sinking adds to string of migrant boat tragedies since Monday off Greek islands of Lesbos, Kalymnos and Rhodes

A woman carries her dog as migrants and refugees queue to enter a registration camp after crossing the Greece-Macedona border, near Gevgelija on November 1, 2015. PHOTO: AFP

ATHENS:
Eleven migrants, including six children — four of them babies — drowned on Sunday in a new tragedy off the Greek island of Samos, coastguards said.

Ten of the dead were found in the cabin of their boat, which overturned as it made the hazardous crossing from the nearby Turkish coast.

The other victim, a young girl, was washed up on the island, where dozens of refugees have perished trying to reach Europe in recent days.

13 children among at least 22 migrants drowned off Greece: authorities

Two others were still missing with coastguards saying 15 were plucked from the water after the boat turned over only 20 metres from the shore.


The new sinking adds to a string of migrant boat tragedies since Monday off the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kalymnos and Rhodes in which more than 60 people have drowned, at least 28 of them children.

On Friday alone 22 people, including 17 children, lost their lives trying to cross to the eastern Aegean islands from Turkey, to which more than two million Syrian refugees have fled.

That followed another black day on Wednesday when 24 migrants — 11 of them children — died in five shipwrecks off Lesbos, Samos and Agathonissi.

With the arrival of rough winter weather, and fears that Europe is about to close its doors to refugees, more than 80 people — most of them children — have drowned trying to reach Greece in October, according to an AFP count.

One-year old boy dies on migrant boat from Turkey to Greece

Since the beginning of the year, 580,125 migrants have landed on Greece's shores, according to the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR), with a total of 723,221 crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.
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