At least 21 more refugees have drowned overnight after two boats sank attempting to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece.
More than 130 people were rescued from a boat that sank near the island of Kalymnos, killing 18, while three more asylum seekers drowned in a separate incident near Rhodes. Six of their fellow passengers were rescued.
On Thursday, another boat capsized off the coast of Lesbos, leaving eight more refugees dead after “a day of death” on Wednesday when dozens died.
Peter Bouckaert, the emergency director at Human Rights Watch, said a chain reaction was set off when the upper deck of an overcrowded wooden boat carrying more than 250 people collapsed, crushing the refugees packed below.
“Following upper deck collapse, a second boat accidentally rammed boat packed with refugees off Lesbos, causing it to sink and sending hundreds into the sea,” he wrote on Twitter.
Aid agencies had hoped that autumn would slow the daily crossings between Turkey and the Greek islands, which overtook the smuggler route between North Africa and Italy as the most used route to Europe following a series of high-profile disasters in the central Mediterranean earlier this year.
But thousands of migrants and asylum seekers continue to journey across the Aegean every day and with weather conditions worsening, there are fears that tragedies will become ever more common.
Reporters for the Associated Press in Lesbos described the victims of Wednesday's disasters floating “belly-up, stripped of their clothing by churning seas” as wailing relatives searched for their loved ones among the survivors on the shore.
On beaches popular with tourists in the summer, paramedics were desperately attempting to revive unconscious babies and toddlers were as their shocked fellow survivors were wrapped in blankets.
Video: Turkish fishermen rescue toddler
A local fisherman, Manolis Galanakis, said one boat sank in gale-force winds, and smugglers on the nearby Turkish coast would have been aware of the risk.
“Crossing in those conditions would be very tough,” he said. “They are criminals. They took their money, put them on boats, and sent them to their death.”
More than 700,000 asylum seekers have reached Europe’s shores already this year in what is said to be the continent’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Many arrivals come from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, either directly fleeing war or leaving overcrowded refugee centres in Turkey and Lebanon.
They arrive in Greece to find little welcome, staying in squalid temporary camps as they wait for documents to move on.
Meanwhile, Austria and Slovenia are following Hungary to close their borders to refugees journeying towards western Europe through the Balkans, making the journey ever longer and more difficult.
Greek officials have called on the European Union to speed up financial aid to Turkey to prevent people leaving, although refugee charities are uncertain what can be done to dissuade families seeking safety and a better future.
“We can't have a situation continuing with dead children in the sea every day,” Giorgos Pallis, a member of Parliament representing Lesbos, told state-run radio.
“Thousands are coming every day, escaping war. We have handled the situation with dignity, but the truth is that we can't even meet their basic needs.”
Additional reporting by AP
