At least 22 migrants, including seven children, who were on board an inflatable boat drowned on Friday off the coast of northwest Turkey, adding to the already long list of tragedies in the Aegean Sea.
“The bodies of 22 people, including those of seven children, were found
,” the governorate of Çanakkale province said in a statement.
A previous report reported 21 deaths, including five children.
At least four people survived the sinking, authorities said.
According to the governorate,
“the boat carrying illegal immigrants capsized”
off the Turkish island of Gökçeada, in Turkish waters, approximately 50 km from the Greek island of Limnos.
Coast guards were dispatched to the scene to try to rescue other people while helicopters, a drone and a plane flew over the area, local authorities said in a statement.
Hundreds of migrants intercepted since the start of the week
The nationality of the migrants was not specified.
The governor of Çanakkale told the state-run Anadolu news agency that the sinking took place overnight.
Ambulances were dispatched to the port of Kabatepe, located opposite the island of Gökçeada, in order to transport the recovered bodies to the morgues of neighboring hospitals, according to Anadolu.
The official Turkish agency reports that two of the survivors of the shipwreck were able to swim to a beach located further north, before raising the alert.
Many migrants continue to try to reach the European Union by boarding dinghies from the Turkish coast towards neighboring Greek islands.
According to Frontex, the EU border agency, the number of migrants trying to enter European soil through the Eastern Mediterranean more than doubled year-on-year in January and February.
Most of them are Afghans, Syrians and Egyptians, according to Frontex.
The Turkish coast guard has indicated that it has rescued or intercepted several hundred migrants attempting to cross to Greece since the start of the week, often accompanied by children.
360 migrants dead or missing since January
At least five people drowned in mid-November after their boat sank off the coast of the Turkish province of Izmir, which faces the Greek islands of Chios and Samos.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 3,105 migrants disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2023, the highest death toll since 2017. Since January, 360 migrants have died or gone missing, according to the same source.
A new drama was added on Wednesday to the long list of tragedies in the Mediterranean, with at least 60 migrants missing at sea after leaving the Libyan coast, according to testimonies from survivors rescued by the Ocean Viking ambulance ship.
In a report published at the beginning of March, the European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) is alarmed by the increase in migrant arrivals on the Greek islands from Turkey.
Turkey is home to nearly four million refugees on its territory, the vast majority of them Syrians, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
An agreement was signed in 2016 between the EU and Turkey for the country to keep Syrian refugees on its soil.