Shipwreck off Antalya: 9 Migrants Drowned

Via New York Times [abstracts] – In Turkey, the Coast Guard said that nine migrants, including six children, had drowned in an accident off the country’s Mediterranean coast.

The migrants’ boat capsized early Sunday morning near the town of Demre in the southern province of Antalya, according to the Turkish Coast Guard, which said it had recovered nine bodies and rescued four other migrants. A fifth was saved by a passing fishing vessel.

The migrants said there had been 14 or 15 people on the vessel, according to the Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu, and the authorities said they were still searching for one other person. The migrants’ nationalities were not immediately released.

At the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, more than 857,000 reached Greece from Turkey. A 2016 deal between Turkey and the European Union has drastically reduced the numbers arriving in Greece. But in March, the bodies of at least 16 people, including five children, were recovered from the sea off a Greek island after a boat smuggling migrants sank in the eastern Aegean.