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Refugee boat in front of Rhodes (symbolic image)
Photo: MICHALIS LOIZOS / REUTERS
At least one person drowned on Monday morning in the wreck of a boat occupied by migrants off the Greek island of Rhodes.
That said a spokesman for the coast guard of the news agency dpa.
The Coast Guard continues to search for victims in the region of the disaster.
The migrants had left the Turkish coast with their boat, it was said.
The local news portal rodiaki.gr showed pictures of a rubber dinghy floating off the coast of Rhodes, half submerged in water.
At least ten migrants managed to swim to the coast of Rhodes, it said.
The number of people who crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands in the east of the Aegean Sea has decreased significantly this year.
According to the UN refugee agency, 9,342 migrants from Turkey arrived on the Greek islands in the East Aegean since the beginning of the year by November 15.
In the entire previous year, almost 60,000 migrants had crossed over.
Security experts in Athens attribute the sharp decline in the influx of migrants to the stricter monitoring of the Greek sea borders with Turkey by the Greek coast guard and also to the corona pandemic and the associated restrictions on movement in Turkey.
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asa / dpa
