Greece - One week into the New Year, IOM’s Missing Migrants Project reports 46 migrants or refugees have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean, the majority dying in a pair of shipwrecks off the Turkish coast last Tuesday.
That’s already more than half the fatalities reported in all of January last year, and more deaths than were counted in the first three months of 2014.
Emrah Guler of IOM Ankara reported this week that Turkish authorities said they found the bodies of 34 migrants, at least three of them children, at two locations on the Aegean coast on Tuesday after they apparently tried to cross to the Greek island of Lesbos. The migrants died after their boat or boats capsized in rough seas. It is not known how many vessels were involved or how many people were on board.
Twenty-four of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalık, the Turkish Coast Guard told Reuters. Ten others were found in the district of Dikili, a gendarmerie official there said.
Explaining that the flow of mostly Syrian refugees and migrants braving the seas to seek sanctuary in Europe dipped towards the end of last year coinciding with colder weather, Guler pointed out that the total figure still reached 1 million in 2015, nearly five times more than in the previous year.
Increased policing on Turkey's shores and colder weather conditions have not deterred refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa from embarking on the perilous journey in small, flimsy boats.
The Coast Guard and gendarmerie rescued 12 people from the sea and the rocks on the Ayvalık coastline. A coastguard official said three boats and a helicopter searched for additional survivors during the week.
Namik Kemal Nazlı, the local administrator for Ayvalık, told media that the victims of the incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria. Nazlı also said the search for other migrants would continue and that the death toll could rise further.
The IOM estimates that 3,771 migrants overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe last year. The final number for 2015, released on Tuesday, was up from the 3,692 figure the agency released before Christmas.
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IOM said last year was the deadliest on record for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, with the number of deaths rising from 3,279 in 2014. IOM said a large majority of the deaths last year occurred on the central Mediterranean route, mainly involving people crossing from Libya – 2,892 or 77 per cent. However, there were 805 deaths in the eastern Mediterranean – accounting for 21 per cent of the total, up from only 1 per cent the previous year – as that route became more popular.