Sixteen dead, dozens missing in Greece migrant sinkings

By AFP 

At least 16 people died and another 30 are still missing as high winds sank two migrant vessels in Greece, the coastguard said Thursday.

A dinghy believed to be carrying around 40 people sank east of the island of Lesbos in high winds, coastguard spokesman Nikos Kokkalas told state TV ERT, adding that all the victims are women of apparent African origin.

There was no official toll yet from a second sinking near the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula.

Kokkalas said nine other women had been rescued in the Lesbos incident, but another 15 people were believed to be missing.

It was difficult to get more information from the survivors as they were "utterly panicked," Kokkalas said.

A few hours earlier, the coastguard was alerted to a sailboat in distress near the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula. The sailboat believed to be carrying around 95 people ran aground and sank near the island port of Diakofti.

Some of the survivors made it to shore, and an operation involving vessels at sea and the fire service and police on land managed to locate 80 asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

The group includes seven women and 18 children, a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.

Kokkalas said their sailboat had been "completely destroyed."

Both operations were facing adverse weather. In the Kythira area, winds were as high as 102 kilometres (63 miles) per hour, the coastguard said.

- 'EU must act' -

Greece has faced increased migration traffic this year, and accuses Turkey of failing to enforce a 2016 agreement with the EU to keep migrants from sailing on to Europe.

Greece's Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi on Thursday tweeted after the two incidents that Turkey should "take immediate action to prevent all irregular departures due to harsh weather conditions".

"Already today many lives lost in the Aegean, people are drowning in unseaworthy vessels. EU must act," Mitarachi said.

Greece, Italy and Spain are among the countries used by people fleeing Africa and the Middle East in search of safety and better lives in the European Union.

The coastguard has said it has rescued about 1,500 people in the first eight months of the year, up from fewer than 600 last year.

Officials note that smugglers now often take the longer and more perilous route south of the country, and sailing out from Lebanon instead of Turkey to bypass patrols in the Aegean Sea and reach Italy.

In December, at least 30 people perished in three separate migrant boat sinkings in the Aegean. The precise death toll is almost impossible to calculate as some bodies are never recovered, or reach shore weeks later.

Greece has rejected persistent claims from rights groups that many more have been illegally pushed back to Turkey without being allowed to lodge asylum claims.

Over the weekend, another group of over 50 migrants whose sailing boat ran into difficulty in the Ionian Sea refused Greek assistance for an entire day until deteriorating weather forced them to back down.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month said Greek "oppressive policies" against migrants were turning the Aegean into a "graveyard."

Greece's Mitarachi this week countered that Turkey is "violently pushing forward migrants to Greece, in violation of international law" and the EU agreement.

Southern European nations -- Greece, Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus -- expect around 160,000 asylum seekers to arrive on their shores this year, Mitarachi told reporters last month.