Eleven dead as refugees’ boat sinks off Greek island of Samos

“In many cases these people have no experience of the sea, and they’ll swallow whatever line the smugglers give them”. Dead children always incite sorrow.

Plucked from the freezing waters by his life jacket, this toddler was among 150 refugees who were lucky enough to be rescued today as they made the perilous crossing to Europe.

The accident occurred just a few days after more than 50 people died from Wednesday to Friday in two of the worst such tragedies in the Aegean since 2015.

Speaking in parliament on Friday, Greece’s prime minister Alexis Tsipras said Europe had not been able to respond to the drama and instead had focused on shifting blame.

Hungary’s right-wing foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, used the same word – hypocrisy – about critics of his country’s fencing off its southern border to keep migrants out.

Istanbul: Four Syrian children drowned off the coast of Turkey when the flimsy boat carrying them to Greece capsized in bad weather. “What we need are safe and legal routes for refugees to come to Europe, to stop people who have already suffered so much losing their lives close to the end their journey”.

Tsipras’s left-led government has appealed for more assistance from its European Union partners. “Almost every day now we are seeing children, parents, the elderly and the young dying as they try to reach Europe”, reports ABC. It rescued 138 people and retrieved 18 bodies. “So it’s a question of how we address this problem”.

Two people also drowned off the coast of Agathonisi.

Greek rescue workers and volunteers have recovered four more bodies believed to be from refugee smuggling boats that sank near the Greek island of Lesbos.

The new sinkings add to a string of migrant boat tragedies since Monday off the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kalymnos and Rhodes in which more than 60 people have drowned, at least 28 of them children.

More than 70 people, many of them children, have died in the last week when their smuggling boats overturned or sank in rough seas as they tried to reach Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast.

This week, the Greek Coast Guard has rescued more than 1,000 people.

Meanwhile, rescuers in southern Spain are searching for 35 migrants missing after their boat broke up on its way from Morocco.

Protesters clashed with police guarding a border fence in northern Greece Saturday, following a series of sea accidents that killed dozens of migrants and a warning from authorities that the death toll is likely rise in coming weeks.

“For next year I think it’s clear the migration pressure will remain”, he said.