34 refugees drown off Greece
Date
9/14/2015 8:17:53 AM
(MENAFN- The Peninsula)Clockwise from top: Syrian and Afghan refugees fall into the sea; a refugee raises a child into the air; a Syrian refugee holding a baby in a lifetube and a refugee shouts as he swims towards the shore after their dinghy deflated some 100m away before reaching the Greek island of Lesbos yesterday.
ATHENS: Thirty-four refugees almost half of them babies and children drowned when their boat sank off a Greek island yesterday almost certainly the largest death toll in those waters since the migrant crisis began the coastguard said.
Four babies six boys and five girls died when the wooden vessel carrying them overturned 5km east of the small island of Farmakonisi close to Turkey’s coast.
Tens of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short but precarious journey from Turkey to Greece’s eastern islands mainly in flimsy and overcrowded inflatable dinghies.
Details of the nationalities and ages of the victims were not immediately available. The coastguard said 68 people were rescued from the water and another 30 survivors from the same boat were found on Farmakonisi.
On Lesbos an island which has borne the brunt of Greece’s migrant intake witnesses saw 10 dinghies arriving within 90 minutes yesterday.
One inflatable carrying about 70 refugees including many children burst about 100 metres from the shore. Locals pulled infants and toddlers - including a two-month old baby cradled by his father - ashore on rubber rings.
The vast majority of refugees reaching Greece quickly head north to other countries with Germany the most favoured destination.
Reuters
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