11 drowned as boat sinks off Greek island

At least 13 people including seven children, drowned when their overloaded boat capsized in the Aegean, police said Wednesday, the latest tragedy involving migrants seeking a better life in Europe, according to Agence France-Presse.

With cold weather making journeys more unsafe, arrivals have slowed, but people are still showing up in Greece, and there’s no sign the flow will abate when temperatures start rising again in the spring.

“This is three to four times as many migrants and refugees coming north as we had in 2014, and the deaths have already far surpassed the deaths past year”, IOM chief William Lacy Swing told Reuters. During an European Union summit on migration last week, Athens promised to speed up the construction of EU-assisted reception and registration centres, so-called hotspots, on five islands. Three-year-old Aylan died in September after his family, sheltering in Turkey from the war in Syria, decided to make a desperate bid to reach Greece in a flimsy inflatable boat. “My message is I’d like the whole world to open its doors to Syrians”. Another 20 percent were Afghans, and 7 percent were Iraqis, IOM and the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said in a joint statement.

“We ask just for a little bit of sympathy from you”.

The number of people displaced by war and conflict is the highest seen in Western and Central Europe since the 1990s, when several conflicts broke out in the former Yugoslavia.

The small boat went down off the Greek island of Farmakonisi overnight, sending 29 people into the water, according to an official with the Greek port police.

People-smuggling operations probably accounted for the majority of journeys and likely earned at least $1 billion, Swing said, taking “anywhere from $2,000 to maybe $6,000 depending on how many members of the family and depending on which smuggling ring it is”.

Almost 3,000 others have died on the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. Nearly all came by sea, while 3,692 drowned in the attempt.