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Boat carrying illegal immigrants sinks off Turkish coast Many children among 60 dead as boat carrying migrants sinks off Turkey
(about 5 hours later)
Scores of people are feared to have drowned after a boat carrying illegal immigrants sank off the coast of Turkey. At least 60 migrants, most of them Palestinian and more than half of them children, died after their overcrowded boat sank less than a hundred metres off Turkey's western Aegean coast on Thursday, a district official said.
Turkish news channels reported that 58 people had died in the incident. Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, the governor of Menderes, a coastal district in Izmir province, told state television TRT that 39 people had died but that he expected the death toll to rise. Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, governor of the coastal district of Menderes in Izmir province, said an initial investigation showed the small vessel sank around dawn, as a result of overcrowding.
Dozens of survivors, mostly from Iraq and Syria, were able to swim through the Aegean waters to shore, only 50 metres (160ft) away. Its destination was unclear but the small Turkish town of Ahmetbeyli, from which it had left, is only a few kilometres from the Greek island of Samos – and Greece is a common entry point for migrants trying to get into the European Union.
The survivors say people had been trapped below the deck of the submerged vessel and many on board were women and children. The group had previously made their way to hotels in the city of Izmir, where smugglers had agreed to take them to Britain. "The latest death toll we have is 60 people, including 11 men, 18 women and 31 children, including three babies," Kurtbeyoglu said.
The television station reported that authorities had arrested two Turkish suspects over the operation. Turkish media said the reason the death toll was so high was that women and children were in a locked compartment in the lower section of the vessel, although there was no official confirmation of this.
It was not immediately clear when the boat sank, but many such vessels carrying illegal immigrants make the journey at night to avoid detection by authorities. Kurtbeyoglu said 46 people had so far been rescued alive, including the ship's Turkish captain and assistant, who had been placed under arrest. He said there were no bodies left on the boat and he did not expect the death toll to rise any further.
Television footage showed several rescue vessels near the dim outline of the submerged boat, which lay just below the surface of the water. Ambulances waited at the top of a cliff, but there were no indications that anyone else had survived. Most of the migrants were Palestinian nationals, and the authorities were still trying to determine the nationality of the others, Kurtbeyoglu said. He added that the survivors spoke Arabic and were of Middle Eastern origin.
Illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa have long sought to reach Europe by passing through Turkey, and their desperate efforts have occasionally ended in disaster. Each year, thousands try to sail to Greek islands from Turkish soil in rickety boats. Turkish media said there were also Syrians and Iraqis on the boat, although that could also not be confirmed.
Turkey is now hosting 80,000 Syrians who have fled the civil war in their country, with most staying in camps near the border. Some countries are concerned that larger numbers of Syrians could try to reach Europe illegally. Greece said in July that it was quadrupling the number of guards at its border with Turkey and boosting other defences in part because of worries about a potential influx. Turkey is sheltering about 80,000 Syrian refugees near its south-eastern border with Syria, several hundred kilometres away on the other side of the country.
Television footage showed small boats and diving teams searching for survivors just off Ahmetbeyli. The boat sank less than 100 metres from the shore after leaving at around 02:30 GMT, officials said.