Two Children Dead as Second Migrant Boat Sinks off Greece This

Greek authorities are searching for survivors after a second boat carrying migrants sank off the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea – close to where another boat carrying migrants sank on Monday.

Greece’s minister for migration blamed people-traffickers for the latest fatal incident off the country’s coast, as the search continued on Thursday for migrants who went missing when their boat sank near the island of Samos in the northern Aegean Sea.

So far 16 people have been rescued and four dead bodies found – two of them children. An offshore patrol vessel, a coast guard vessel, a rescue team vessel and land forces have been participating in the rescue operation.

Greece’s public broadcaster ERT reported that a dinghy carrying an unknown number of people ran aground on rocks at almost exactly the same spot as an earlier boat sank on Monday. Eight people died in Monday’s incident, six of whom were children, while another 36 were rescued alive.

“It is always estimated that bad weather conditions also play a role, however, in late November, as we approach December, the weather at sea worsens and therefore all this activity carried out by criminal organisations becomes more risky,” Greek Migration and Asylum Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos told SKAI TV on Thursday.

“These people are responsible for loading a large number of people and children onto boats to transport them to the Greek islands. And in these weather conditions, the chances of an accident, a shipwreck with deaths, with drownings at sea are increased,” Panagiotopoulos added.

The International Organisation for Migration, IOM says the Eastern Mediterranean as an important maritime route used by migrants to enter Europe, involving journeys by sea from Turkey and, to a lesser degree, from Cyprus and Bulgaria.

The IOM has said that, so far, 1,933 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean, 102 of them in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Eastern Mediterranean saw migrant numbers rise by 15 per cent in the first nine months of the year, to 45,600. September was the busiest time on the route, with 6,750 detections, compared to 5,600 detections in the Central Mediterranean, the EU border agency Frontex reported in a press release in October.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR has said that so far this year, up until November 24, a total of 55,998 migrants reached Greece, 48,984 of whom arrived by sea.