News / EU

Nine more refugees drown in waters near Greece

Tuesday, 17 November 2015 5:17 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 17 November 2015 5:18 PM ]

Volunteers approach a raft overcrowded with refugees at dawn on the Greek island of Lesbos, November 17, 2015. (Reuters photo)

Another boat carrying refugees has capsized en route from Turkey to Greece, killing nine people including four children.

The Greek coastguard said on Tuesday the boat drowned off the island of Kos. Four women are among the dead.

The crew of a Finnish ship, which is involved in the EU's border security agency Frontex operations, detected the vessel.

Rescuers, meanwhile, were continuing their search operation well into Tuesday night to find two Iraqi boys. They had already rescued seven passengers.

On Saturday, a three-year-old child died near the Greek island of Chios in the north after the motor of the boat he was travelling in went off.

A woman cries as she found her children, after arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos along with other refugees, on November 17, 2015, after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey. (AFP photo)

Figures gathered by the United Nations show that nearly 3,500 asylum seekers that tried to enter Europe via sea have drowned so far this year while over 800,000 refugees, mostly escaping war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have crossed the Mediterranean to reach the continent in 2015.

Most of the refugees first arrived at Greece and from there tried to travel to richer EU member states like Germany and Sweden to seek asylum.

Amid the huge influx of asylum seekers to Europe, European officials are divided over how to deal with them.

Meanwhile, anti-refugee rhetoric has gained a new momentum as initial investigations into the recent deadly attacks in the French capital Paris pointed to the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one of the attackers. Prosecutors in France said the fingerprints of the attacker matched those recorded in October in Greece.

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