Boat with Syrians sinks off Turkey

(MENAFN- Arab News) ANKARA: Seventeen Syrian refugees including five children drowned Sunday when their boat sank in Turkish waters on its way to Greece local media reported.

The Turkish coast guard recovered the bodies from the wooden boat that had set off from the Turkish holiday resort town of Bodrum for the Greek island of Leros the Dogan news agency reported.
The refugees drowned when they failed to get out of the boat's cabin the news agency said.
Another 20 migrants who were on the boat's deck survived and swam back to the Turkish coast it added. All were wearing life jackets.
The survivors were taken to a morgue in Bodrum to identify their drowned relatives.
There has been a sharp spike in the numbers of migrants and refugees setting out from Turkey in flimsy boats for the European Union in search of better lives.
Most are fleeing conflicts and misery in Syria Afghanistan Pakistan and Africa. The picture of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi whose body was found washed up on a Turkish beach after a failed attempt to reach Greece horrified the world pressuring European leaders to step up their response to the refugee crisis.
Meanwhile some 500 migrants were rescued in seven operations launched over the weekend in the Mediterranean the Italian coast guard said.
A spokesman told AFP on Sunday that four of the rescue operations had already wound up but the others were ongoing.
'Saturday was quiet on the whole but now there is further movement' he said. 'We have had several interventions one by a ship belonging to (medical charity) MSF two coast guard units as well as an Italian naval ship and a ship belonging to EU Navfor Med' he said.
The EU Navfor Med is a military operation launched at the end of June to identify capture and dispose of vessels and rescue migrants undertaking risky journeys in a desperate bid to try and get to Europe from war-ravaged Syria and other trouble spots.
The mission is equipped with four ships including an Italian aircraft carrier and four planes. It is manned by 1318 troops from 22 European countries.
A German frigate named Werra and an MSF (Doctors Without Borders) ship rescued 140 people from a giant dinghy on Saturday afternoon according to an AFP photographer.
The migrants mainly came from the west African countries of Nigeria Ghana Senegal and Sierra Leone and left Libya three days earlier. They were rescued about 80 kilometers off the Libyan coast.
EU leaders have agreed to boost aid for Syria's neighbors including one billion dollars through UN agencies in a bid to mitigate the refugee influx into Europe. Some 500000 people have come to Europe so far this year the International Organization for Migration says many of them taking perilous journeys across the Mediterranean on inflatable dinghies.
More than 2800 people have died or disappeared making the crossing since January.