21 migrants die and dozens missing after two boat disasters in Greece

Greece has blamed Turkey and its “tolerance of ruthless smugglers” for causing the deaths of at least 22 people after two migrant boats capsized off the Greek coast. Bodies were found floating amid the splintered wreckage off the eastern island of Lesbos after a boat carrying about 40 migrants sank, killing 16 young African women, a man and a toddler, the coastguard said. At least 20 people were missing.

“Turkey is responsible for the deadly sinkings. This has to stop,” Yannis Oikomonou, a Greek government spokesman said. Yannis Plakiotakis, the shipping minister, said: “Once again, Turkey’s tolerance of gangs of ruthless traffickers has cost human lives.”

Hours earlier another migrant boat hit rocks and capsized off the island of Kythira, nearly 300 miles to the west. Stratos Harhalakis, the mayor, described it as the “worst possible place to crash”, as the site could not be accessed by sea

Residents and firefighters pulled survivors up steep cliffs as waves crashed against them, forcing some migrants to lose their grip and be dragged back out to sea.

Local residents rushed to the area and worked with the coastguard, fire service and police through 60mph winds to find about 80 of the people — mostly from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan — who had been on board.

 “What those of us who found ourselves in Diakofti went through tonight cannot be imagined. Losing people in front of our eyes . . . it was a tragedy like hell,” wrote Michalis Protopsaltis, one of the volunteers trying to pull people from the water.

He said they had managed to save 82 people but were unsure how many others had drifted out to sea and been lost.

Volunteer groups posted on social media calling for blankets, baby wipes, sanitary pads, underwear and socks to be delivered to a school in a nearby village.

The mayor of Kythira told Greek media that 11 of those rescued had been taken to hospital, and that 18 of the 69 migrants being looked after in a nearby village were children.

Relations between Turkey and Greece over migrant boats have long been strained.

Last month President Erdogan of Turkey held up photographs of dead migrant children at the UN general assembly and accused Greece of “turning the Aegean Sea into a graveyard”.

Turkish officials accuse Greece of carrying out reckless “pushbacks” towards Turkish waters without allowing migrants to lodge asylum claims.

This week Notis Mitarachi, Greece’s migration minister, said Turkey was “violently pushing forward migrants to Greece, in violation of international law”.

As the two countries’ volatile back and forth continues, an increasing number of migrants are caught in the middle. The Greek coastguard said it had rescued about 1,500 people in the first eight months of the year, up from fewer than 600 last year.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, speaking from Prague as he arrived for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community, urged Europe to “work together, in a much more meaningful way” to prevent such incidents.

He added: “And to completely neutralise the traffickers who are exploiting innocent people, desperate people, who are trying to reach the European continent on boats that are clearly not seaworthy.”

Greece was on the front line of the European migration crisis in 2015 and 2016, when about a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in the country, mainly via Turkey.

The number of arrivals has fallen since then. However, Greek officials said they had recently seen an increase in attempted entries through the country’s islands and the land border with Turkey.