Migrants: Greece accuses Turkey after the death of four children in a shipwreck

On October 26, 2021, the Greek Coast Guard said it had rescued 20 people from a migrant boat that sank in the Aegean Sea.

Four children drowned and one person is missing.

AFP - DIMITRIS VOUCHOURIS

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Athens accuses Ankara of not making enough efforts to prevent the departure of migrants after the deadly sinking on Tuesday of a boat of migrants off the Greek coast from Turkey.

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With our correspondent in Athens,

“ 

So much for the reaction, on Twitter, of the Greek Minister of Migration, following the shipwreck which claimed the lives of four children " 

" off the island of Chios, Turkey's neighbor.

Notis Mitarakis had previously underlined "

" which came to the aid of the 22 other people, also present on board this small overloaded boat, called "dinghy".

Difficult weather conditions, combined with the high number of passengers, who were otherwise without life jackets, are believed to be the cause of the accident and the death of the children.

In 2015 and 2016, during the influx of asylum seekers and migrants, Greece was the main gateway to Europe.

However, the number of arrivals has dropped drastically over the past two years, in part due to the hardening of Greece's migration policy and informal push-backs.

This year, according to the count of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 2,500 people made the crossing between Turkey and the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea.

With nearly 4 million people on its soil, most of them Syrians, 

 is for its part the country which hosts the largest number of refugees in the world. 

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