Following their rescue they informed the crew that they had been travelling in a small launch with another 15 people. The alarm was raised and a search and rescue operation was launched for the remaining people with civilian and Turkish and Greek Coast Guard vessels participating.
Eight people have been rescued in total while another seven bodies have been recovered. Among the dead are two women and three children. The Coast Guard is continuing the operation as it believes that there were another two people travelling in the boat who are still unaccounted for.
Speaking to the Mega TV channel, Shipping Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said that the Greek authorities had initially been notified of the incident by their Turkish counterparts who had been contacted by the ship that had located the two immigrants. He called the incident a tragedy and added that another two similar incidents had taken place in the Aegean the same night but without loss of life.
The semi-submerged small fiberglass boat in which the immigrants had been travelling has been located by the Coast Guard which recovered five bodies from the wreck. Another two bodies were recovered from the area as well as six survivors who were pulled from the waters by a Turkish patrol boat according to skai.gr (link in Greek). All of the survivors were transferred to the port of Mytilini.
SYRIZA released a statement stating that the tragedy underlined the urgent need for a change to the EU’s immigration policy.
“The carnage in the Aegean should shake-up every civilized human being. We can no longer talk of ‘accidents’ given that the fatal incidents are at risk of becoming routine,” the statement from the opposition party’s headquarters reads. “Tragedies in the Aegean are the bloody consequence of Greek and European policy which treats immigrants as enemies in a supposed war.”
SYRIZA also accused the Greek government and the EU of not doing anything to combat the root causes behind the wave of refugees and immigrants, chief among them being the war in Syria.
“We have already mourned too many dead. It is time for a change to immigration policy,” the statement concludes.