13 migrants drown in latest Aegean Sea sinking

The agency says Turkish coast guards spotted the refugees during a routine patrol.

Fifteen of the passengers were saved by rescuers while another two are still missing, according to Greek authorities.

There was no information on their country of origin.

The assortment of migrants & refugees who’ve entered Europe by ocean & land this yr has passed the a million mark, a long-expected still symbolically vital capstone to a yr by which displaced people flocked to the Continent.

As of 21 December, some 972,500 had crossed the Mediterranean Sea, according to UNHCR figures. Another 34,215 have crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land.

Most of the 2,889 deaths this year came on the Mediterranean between north Africa and Italy, IOM said.

The UNHCR said that of the million who reached Europe in 2015, about half were Syrians fleeing the country’s brutal civil war.

Almost 3,700 others died trying to cross the Mediterranean in Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Germany alone has received a million refugees and migrants this year, although many were already within Europe, particularly in the Balkans.

But many continue to push in to Europe, where they hope to gain citizenship through laws created under the 1951 United Nations convention on refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had chose to let all Syrians enter the country, a decision that was condemned by other European leaders who feared that it would attract even more migrants.

““Fifteen major conflicts over the past five years, all producing mass displacement”, he said.

“2015 will be remembered as a year of human suffering and migrant tragedies”, William Lacy Swing, the director general of the IOM, said in a statement.

The figures were released as Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency reported that 11 more people, including three children, drowned in the Aegean Sea, underscoring the grave risks taken by those striving to reach Europe.

“If we are creative in using our visa policies to give temporary protective status to everyone so there is a measure of support there… then I think it is a manageable proposition”, he said.

Most migrants and refugees want to settle in richer northern countries like Germany and Sweden.

A majority of over 800,000 refugees have, however, landed in Greece this year.

Winter conditions have seen a decrease in the numbers of people seeking to reach Europe on risky journeys by sea.