ATHENS: Five people including an 11-month girl died Monday and 54 people were rescued when two migrant boats sank off Greece, officials said.
The first capsize took place off the island of Samos near the Turkish border. The coast guard rescued 37 people, including a woman who had died, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis and the coast guard said.
Later, another boat sank near the Greek island of Lesbos. Four migrants died, including an 8-year-old boy and three girls, aged 11 months, 8 years and 14 years, Marinakis said.
Public broadcaster ERT said 1,100 people had arrived in Greece in August against 789 in July and 608 in June, citing government figures.
It said 10,790 migrants and arrived in Greece in the first eight months of this year against 5,216 in the previous corresponding period.
In June, an overcrowded fishing trawler carrying up to 750 people who had been picked up in Libya sank off Greece.
Around 100 of them were saved, but it is thought that some 600 drowned, according to Greek figures.
Thousands of migrants, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, have entered Greece in recent years from the sea and land borders with Turkiye. Following a strict migration policy, Greece has stepped up patrols in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkiye with the help of the European Border Surveillance Agency, Frontex.
Elsewhere, About 170 migrants who were rescued in the Atlantic Ocean have been stuck aboard a Spanish Civil Guard boat for days near the northwest African nation of Mauritania after authorities there refused to let them disembark, according to Spanish media reports.
Spain’s Interior Ministry on Monday declined to provide details of the incident but said in an email that it was “confident that the situation would be resolved in the following hours.” It said 168 people were rescued.
A spokesperson for Mauritania’s Interior Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
Leading Spanish newspaper El País said the Civil Guard rescued the migrants Thursday about 80 nautical miles off the coast of Mauritania. It said the migrants are believed to be Senegalese.
The Civil Guard is one of two national police forces in Spain. For years, it has worked with local authorities in Mauritania and Senegal to try to prevent migrants from attempting to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa. In recent months, there has been a surge of migrants departing from Senegal who must navigate north past Mauritania to reach the Canaries.
International maritime law mandates that any person found in distress at sea must be rescued and brought to the nearest place of safety.
