Six children among eight migrants drowned off coast of Turkey

Coast guard teams launched search and rescue efforts in the boat packed with refugees that capsized off Bademler area of Izmir’s Dikili district as it tried to reach Greek islands.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the number of migrants and refugees crossing illegally into Europe by sea and land in 2015 represented a fourfold rise on last year’s total. Approximately three percent of the refugees crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land.

Another 706 people are known to have died trying to cross the Aegean between the Turkish coast and a number of nearby Greek islands.

At least 820,000 refugees and economic migrants have reached Greece’s eastern islands this year.

IOM Director General, William Lacy Swing, called once again the European Union to promote policies to make migration legal, safe and secure in order to stop the ongoing migration tragedies and help the refugees and migrants to avoid dealings with smugglers. The Turkish Coast Guard confirmed the death toll, which includes eleven children and one pregnant woman.

“At this time of year I would like to ask you all to think about the pain of fathers, mothers and children who are seeking peace and security”, says Kurdi who now lives in Erbil in Iraq. About 94,000 have been rescued at sea, while more than 200 have perished in the Aegean. Tragically, almost 3,700 people have died this year or are missing after trying to cross the Mediterranean.

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

After an initial chaotic reaction which resulted in tens of thousands of people moving from Greece through the Western Balkans and northwards, and finding themselves blocked at various borders, a more coordinated European response is beginning to take shape.