Tag Archives: Greece

Macedonia police fire tear gas at migrants while Europe bickers

IDOMENI/ATHENS (Reuters) – Macedonian police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday as a deeply divided Europe traded barbs over the biggest humanitarian crisis in decades.

As frustrations boiled over at restrictions imposed on people moving through the Balkans, migrants trapped on the Greece-Macedonia border tore down a metal gate in the barbed wire fence.

A Reuters witness said Macedonian police fired several rounds of teargas into the crowd and onto a railway line where other migrants sat refusing to move, demanding to cross into the country.

Greece raced to set up temporary accommodation for a build-up of thousands of migrants stranded in the country after Austria and countries along the Balkans migration route imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the number of migrants able to cross.

Many of the migrants, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa, hope to reach Germany, which last year took in 1.1 million asylum seekers.

There were an estimated 22,000 migrants and refugees trapped in Greece on Monday, some sleeping rough in central Athens, some in an abandoned airport and at the 2004 Olympic Games venues.

Greece’s migration minister said without any outlet, that figure could rise as high as 70,000 in coming days.

More than 1 million migrants passed through the country last year, prompting criticism from other European nations that Athens was simply waving them through.

“These people do not want to stay here,” said Thodoris Dritsas, Greece’s shipping minister. “Even if we had a system in place for them to stay here permanently it wouldn’t work.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing the biggest test of her decade in power, on Sunday defended the country’s open-door policy for migrants, rejecting any limit on the number of refugees it allowed in despite divisions within the government over the issue.

“It is my damn duty to do everything I can so that Europe finds a collective way,” she told state broadcaster ARD.

That way was lacking on Monday, however, a week before European Union leaders meet with officials from Turkey to discuss how it can help stem the flow of migrants from its shores.

In an increasingly shrill debate, Austria’s defense minister suggested Merkel take in all those who were stranded in Greece.

“The German chancellor … said that formally there is no upper limit in Germany. Then, I would invite her to take the people, who arrive in Greece now and whom she wants to take care of, directly to Germany,” Hans Peter Doskozil told Austria’s Oe1 radio.

TENT COMMUNITY

Thousands of people have been gathering at Idomeni, the small frontier community on Greece’s border with Macedonia, for days. Hundreds of tents were pitched in soggy fields on Monday and there were reports that fights had broken out among families over tents, which were in short supply.

Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki said that there was a problem with “shifting in responsibility” and shifting the problem to the next border.

“Frustration has accumulated because for several days some of these people have been blocked at the Greek border,” he told Reuters.

Nearly 100 foreign police officers – from countries including Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria – were deployed in Macedonia, he said, adding the figure could go up to 350.

In a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, he said that “encouraging” cooperation had been established with Greece on the issue but that it may not be enough.

On Monday, a crush developed along the frontier after rumors spread that Macedonian authorities had opened the border. Crowds gathered at the razor wire fence then used a heavy metal pole to bring down a gate. At least two people collapsed in the crush and after teargas was fired at them, Reuters television images showed.

Aid agencies said the border was opening with Macedonia intermittently, with about 7,000 people gathered in the area.

People were also being sent back for apparent discrepancies between registration documents they received from Greek authorities and their own travel documents, witnesses said.

“There are people who have been here for as long as 10 days,” said Gemma Gillie of aid agency Medicins Sans Frontieres. “Things are really stretched to the limit.”

(Reporting By Alexandros Avramidis in Idomeni, Lefteris Karagiannopoulos in Athens, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Kirsti Knolle in Vienna; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Migrant girl in wheelchair sits silently at shut Macedonian border for hours

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Wheelchair-bound Zhino Hasan, 17, sat silently and alone for most of Friday in front of a closed border gate, hoping that Macedonia would relent and allow her and her family to resume their northward trek through the Balkans to Germany.

Her father, Sarkawt, wheeled her there at daybreak on Friday, hoping to get a headstart in the queue whenever the border Greece shares with Macedonia in the small community of Idomeni reopens.

The Hasan family, Iraqi Kurds from Kirkuk, are among at least 20,000 refugees and migrants trapped in Greece following successive border shutdowns along the Balkan route used by refugees to reach wealthier European nations.

“We want to get to Germany,” said Sarkawt Hasan, 46. They arrived in Greece through the island of Lesbos eight days ago.

Strapped in and wearing no shoes, Hasan is handicapped and unable to speak. When it started raining, her family covered her with plastic bags.

Hunched to one side in a black fleece hoodie covering her face, she sat in front of a sliding iron gate topped with razor wire. Occasionally, Zhino’s father would call across the border asking Macedonian police to open the gate, but did not get a response.

“I am begging (United Nations’ Secretary-General) Ban Ki-Moon for help, I’m begging the EU to open the borders,” he said.

“My daughter needs help. I don’t know what to do.”

Macedonia and other countries along the Balkan route have agreed to limit the flow of migrants to about 580 per day per country, Slovenian police said on Friday, one day after a meeting on the crisis hosted by Austria.

Greece, furious over not being invited to the talks in Vienna, asked its passenger ferry companies and travel agencies on Friday to cut back on bringing migrants and refugees from frontline islands to the Greek mainland.

Macedonia has previously said it will only now allow Syrian and Iraqi nationals to cross its border from Greece.

(Writing By Michele Kambas; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Greece seeks to stem flow of migrants as thousands trapped by border limits

ATHENS/IDOMENI (Reuters) – Greece moved to slow the flow of migrants from its islands to the mainland on Friday as thousands of homeless refugees were trapped in the country by border limits imposed along a Balkan route to richer nations in northern Europe.

From its northern frontier with Macedonia to its port of Piraeus in the south, Greece was inundated with refugees and migrants after border shutdowns cascaded through the Balkans, stranding at least 20,000 in the country.

At Idomeni, a small community on the border with Macedonia, Reuters witnesses saw hundreds of families walking towards the frontier to join an estimated 3,000 more at a makeshift camp where many pitched tents in a field close to razor wire fence.

More than 500 km further south, hundreds of people were temporarily accommodated at a disused airport west of Athens. Sleeping mats were strewn across the terminal among biscuit wrappers as many women sat on the floor, some weeping.

“Planes bombed our homes, it was dangerous to stay there,” said mother of three Rajiya Zara, 38, nine months pregnant. “I’m afraid for my children.”

Between 300 and 400 people refused to stay at the airport, and took off on their own. “Help Us,” a large piece of paper held by one said. “We are human, open the borders”, read another, scrawled on a sleeping mat.

WE DIDN’T START IT

Athens on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Austria in anger over the border closures and has threatened to block European Union decision-making unless the bloc comes up with concerted action to deal with the crisis.

In the latest measure to slow the northward movement of migrants, the police chiefs of Slovenia, Austria, Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia agreed to limit the flow to about 580 per day per country, Slovenian police said on Friday.

The police chiefs are “obliged to limit daily transit through Western Balkans countries to a number which would enable a control of every migrant according to Schengen rules,” the police said.

Austria had earlier in the week hosted a summit of Balkan nations on how to regulate the migrant flows, but did not invite Athens. “Greece is being attacked by short-sighted countries, as if we were bombing Syria or created the refugee flows,” said Nikos Kotzias, Greece’s foreign minister.

Greece asked its passenger ferry companies and travel agencies on Friday to cut back on bringing migrants and refugees from frontline islands to the mainland and said its own chartered ships would stay put for a few days.

The moves, described by Greece’s shipping minister as temporary, are designed to stem a flow of people mostly fleeing violence in the Middle East.

Most refugees arrive in the European Union after a short but at times dangerous journey by small boats from Turkey to nearby Greek islands such as Lesbos.

“We have taken some actions because of border closings, including an increase of temporary shelter spaces and a relative slowdown of the transport of migrants from the islands to the port of Piraeus,” Shipping Minister Thodoris Dritsas told Skai TV.

He said three ships chartered specifically to move migrants to the Greek mainland would be docked at the islands and accommodate refugees for “two or three days”.

“It is a small scale slowdown (of flows to the mainland),” he said.

Macedonia, to the immediate north, is accepting only Iraqis and Syrians, witnesses say, with Afghans being turned back. Many of those who travelled the 550 km journey north only to be turned away sat in the stinking and overcrowded airport terminal on Friday, pondering their fate.

“I want to go to Germany,” said 18-year-old Nadershah Ahmedi, a student from Afghanistan. “When we came to Greece we heard the borders to Macedonia are closed for Afghans. Why can Syrians and Iraqis pass but not us?”

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos, Angeliki Koutantou, and Alkis Konstantinidis, and Marja Novak in Ljubljana; writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Dominic Evans)

Greece rages at neighbors amid fears migrants could be halted

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece raged at neighbors and began bussing hundreds of migrants back from its northern border on Tuesday, fearing it could be inundated with migrants halted by Balkan states trying to shut the main land route to Western Europe.

Athens filed a rare diplomatic protest with fellow EU member Austria for excluding Greek officials from a high-level meeting on measures aimed at curbing Europe’s biggest inward migration since World War Two.

More than a million migrants and refugees passed through Greece last year, and nearly 100,000 have already arrived this year. Nearly all reached Greece by sea and travelled onward by land over the Balkan peninsula to richer EU countries further north and west, above all Germany.

But several of the countries along that route have been taking measures to close their frontiers, prompting those further down the chain to impose similar restrictions to prevent a bottleneck.

Greek police removed migrants from the Greek-Macedonian border on Tuesday after additional passage restrictions imposed by Macedonian authorities left hundreds of people, mainly Afghans, stuck at the border.

About 450 of them were loaded onto buses to be taken to reception centres in Athens, joining hundreds more fresh arrivals from outlying Greek islands who arrived on the Greek mainland on Tuesday morning.

“I will continue on to Macedonia,” said Abdulah Farash, 21, a student from Syria. “My friend and I want to go on to Germany… it was important to reach Greece through Izmir,” he said of a Turkish Aegean port where many migrants set off for the passage to Greece. “Then things are easy.”

At the border with Macedonia on Monday, witnesses said Syrian refugees who did not have all travel documents, including passports, were turned back.

European countries are trying to slow the migration wave, which includes hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and other war zones, as well as large numbers of other migrants from north Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Austria is due to host west Balkan states on Wednesday to discuss efforts to manage and curb the flow, but did not invite Greece. In unusually heated language that shows how the migration crisis has raised passions across Europe, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias described the snub as a “unilateral and non-friendly act”.

“The exclusion of our country at this meeting is seen as a non-friendly act since it gives the impression that some, in our absence, are expediting decisions which directly concern us.”

Greece also accused its old foe Turkey of trying to “blow apart” an agreement that NATO would help patrol the porous sea border between Greece and Turkey to clamp down on human trafficking.

Turkey, which is hosting 2.5 million Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population on earth, says it is trying to stop them from sailing for Greece but needs more aid.

FINANCIAL CRISIS

Greece, still labouring under a financial crisis that has wrecked living standards at home, says it would not be able to cope with the influx on its own, if the onward passage of migrants through the Balkans is halted.

It says it cannot turn back thousands of people arriving on its shores daily in inflatable dinghies, citing international conventions.

Austria, the last country on the overland route to Germany, said last week it had imposed a daily limit of 3,200 migrants passing through, and 80 asylum claims.

Further down, Hungary has said it would shut three railway crossings with Croatia used by migrants, effective Feb. 22. Slovenia has erected a fence on its southern border with Croatia to ensure that migrants can enter only through official border crossings.

“The Balkan route was a humanitarian corridor. It could close after consultations and not by turning one country against the other,” Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas told Skai TV. “We are faced with an action that has elements of a coup.”

Vienna denied it had snubbed Athens by excluding it from Wednesday’s talks. The meeting of West Balkan nations was an established format which had first convened in Austria last year to discuss the issue of Islamist militants, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The meeting includes interior and foreign ministers from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

(Additional reporting by Alexandros Avramidis, Alkis Konstantinidis, Lefteris Karagianopoulos, Renee Maltezou and George Georgiopoulos in Athens and Francois Murphy in Vienna; writing by Michele Kambas)

Frontex: 68K migrants arrive in Europe last month, 38 times last January’s rate

Cold weather and rough seas did not deter the approximately 68,000 migrants who arrived in Greece last month, the European Union’s border protection agency announced Monday.

That number was 38 times higher than the number of migrants who made it to Greece last January, Frontex said in a news release, at the start of what was a record year for displacement.

Frontex has said more than 1 million migrants arrived in the European Union last year, nearly five times the 2014 total. Monthly arrivals topped 100,000 in July and remained at six-figure levels through December as refugees fled conflict-torn nations in the Middle East and Africa.

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says another 35,000 migrants traveled to Greece and Italy by sea during the first three weeks of February, bringing this year’s total arrivals above 100,000.

Only 13,000 people arrived in Greece and Italy in the first two months of 2015, the UNHCR said.

Frontex tried to place a positive spin on the migrant numbers released Monday, saying they represented a roughly 40 percent monthly drop from the 108,000 who arrived in Greece last December. The agency said winter weather contributed to the month-over-month decline.

But those who did arrive still added to a growing list of migrants who are seeking better lives in Europe, as nations face growing pressure as to how to cope with the massive inflow of people.

The vast majority of them arrive in Greece, the International Office for Migration (IOM) has said, as they are often shuttled on packed, unsafe boats across the Aegean Sea from Turkey.

Most of the migrants who arrived in Greece are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Frontex said.

Others arrive in Italy, a destination for sea routes that depart from Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Most of the migrants who arrived in Italy last month were from Nigeria, Frontex said.

The African nation is home to Boko Haram, which last year’s Global Terrorism Index dubbed the world’s deadliest terror group, and Fulani militants who have become increasingly deadly.

However, the migrants who are choosing to make the journey are also encountering some risks.

On Friday, The IOM, UNHCR and United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund on Friday warned of the increasing number of migrants who have drowned on their journeys to Europe.

Thousands of migrants trapped in Greece as neighbors tighten restrictions

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of migrants were stranded in northern Greece on Monday after neighboring Macedonia demanded additional identification from people seeking to cross the border and head to Western Europe, witnesses said.

European leaders are concerned that migrants passing through austerity-hit Greece to more prosperous countries could end up stranded if Greece’s northern neighbors tighten border controls.

Greek officials say the flow of people across the border slowed after Macedonia demanded additional identification from people seeking passage.

About 5,000 people massed at two locations in northern Greece, close to the border with Macedonia, while aid groups urged another 4,000, who arrived on the Greek mainland from outlying islands, not to head to north for fear of creating a bottleneck.

“Our biggest fear is that the 4,000 migrants who are in Athens head up here and the place will become overcrowded,” said Antonis Rigas, a coordinator of the medical relief charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

Balkan states straddling the migrant route to western and northern Europe have begun denying passage to individuals not coming from the conflict regions of Syria and Iraq.

One migrant in his mid-30s, who said he was from the Syrian town of Aleppo, said Macedonian police did not let him cross the border because he did not have a passport.

“I lost everything in the war, I have no documents,” he said, declining to give his name. He said he had obtained Greek registration papers at the island of Lesbos.

Macedonia has erected a metal fence topped with razor wire at the main crossing point for migrants along its southern border with Greece.

Greek migration minister Yannis Mouzalas criticized his neighbors for shirking their responsibilities amid the crisis.

“Not only have Visegrad countries not taken in one refugee, they didn’t even send a blanket or a tent,” he told the TV channel of Greece’s parliament, referring to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

They had not sent a ‘single policeman’ to reinforce the EU border agency Frontex either, he said.

Austria has invited Balkan states to a meeting on migration in Vienna on Feb. 24, a day before EU interior ministers are due to meet on the migrant crisis.

Vienna has angered other EU members by imposing a cap on asylum claims, limiting the number of migrants permitted into its territory to 3,200 per day, and introducing a daily cap of 80 asylum claims.

Its interior minister has said Austria could impose even stricter controls, a move that could trigger other countries north of Greece to do the same.

(Additional reporting by Fedja Grulovic; writing by Michele Kambas; editing by Katharine Houreld)

Greeks at frontline of migrant crisis angry at Europe’s criticism

ABOARD THE AGIOS EFSTRATIOS, Aegean Sea (Reuters) – Greek Captain Argyris Frangoulis lifts his binoculars and with eyes fixed on the Aegean Sea horizon, steers his patrol boat out near the Turkish border to a dinghy full of stranded refugees.

He zeroes in on the target and gasps – “My God!” – another grey rubber motor boat packed with about four times as many people as it can hold, many of them young children and babies.

“Everybody safe, OK?” he yells at the passengers, mainly Syrians and Afghans, approaching the coast guard vessel bewildered and in near-silence. “Stay calm and do not panic!”

About 50 people are pulled aboard one by one, smiling but too exhausted to speak. By the time they stagger wearily to the boat’s rear, a dinghy is spotted in the distance. Then another, and another, crammed almost entirely with women and children.

By midday, the Agios Efstratios, a gunboat with 29-member crew who work in shifts, had plucked more than 600 people from sea and ferried them to the port of Lesbos, the island on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis.

From Greece’s islands, the refugees and migrants travel to the mainland and then to the northern border with non-European Union member Macedonia. Most of them are trying to reach Germany.

The influx has led some in the EU to accuse Greece of failing to make use of available EU funds and personnel to ensure people arriving in the Schengen zone of open border travel are documented. Some EU members have suggested Greece should be suspended from Schengen if it does not improve.

But the criticism and threats have been met with anger in Greece. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday said the EU was “confused and bewildered” by the migrant crisis and said the bloc should take responsibility like Greece has done, despite being crash-strapped.

Most Greeks, including the coast guard, the army, the police were “setting an example of humanity to the world,” Tsipras said.

For those at the frontline, foreign criticism is even more painful.

“We’re giving 150 percent,” said Lieutenant Commander Antonis Sofiadelis, head of coast guard operations on Lesbos.

Once a dinghy enters Greek territorial waters, the coast guard is obliged to rescue it and transport its passengers to the port.

“The sea is not like land. You’re dealing with a boat with 60 people in constant danger. It could sink, they could go overboard,” he said.

RELIEF AFTER EVERY RESCUE

More than a million people, many fleeing war-ravaged countries and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, reached Europe in the past year, most of them arriving in Greece.

For the crews plying a 250-km-long coastline between Lesbos and Turkey, the numbers attempting the crossing are simply too big to handle. It is but a fraction of a coastline thousands of kilometers long between Greece and Turkish shores.

“The flow is unreal,” Sofiadelis said.

Lesbos has long been a stopover for refugees. Locals recall when people fleeing the Iraqi-Kurdish civil war in the mid-1990s swam across from Turkey.

Yet those numbers do not compare to what has become Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War Two and which has continued unabated despite the winter making the Aegean Sea even more treacherous.

After days of gale force winds and freezing temperatures, more than 2,400 people arrived on Greece’s outlying islands on Monday, nearly double the daily average for February, according to United Nations data.

Sofiadelis, the Lesbos commander, said controls should be stepped up on the Turkish side, while Europe should provide assistance with more boats, more staff and better monitoring systems such as radars and night-vision cameras.

Greek boats, assisted by EU border control agency Frontex, already scan the waters night and day.

By late morning on Monday, Captain Frangoulis and his crew – including a seafaring dog picked up at a port years ago – have been at sea for more than 24 hours.

Each time his crew spot a boat that could be carrying migrants “our stomach is tied up in knots,” Frangoulis said. “There’s this fear that everything must go well, everyone boards safely, no child falls in the sea, no one’s injured.”

Though fewer than 10 nautical miles separate Lesbos from Turkish shores, hundreds of people have drowned trying to make it across.

Patrol boats, as well as local fishermen, have often fished out corpses from the many shipwrecks of the past months, the bodies blackened and bruised from days at sea.

After every rescue operation, a sense of relief fills the crews. Once the Agios Efstratios docked at the Lesbos harbor on Monday, Frangoulis’ beaming crew helped passengers disembark, holding up crying babies in their arms.

“There’s no room for sentimentalism. We execute commands,” Frangoulis said of the rescue operations.

“Beyond commands, we’re human. We’ll lose heart, we’ll cry, we’ll feel sad if something doesn’t go well. There isn’t a person who won’t be moved by this,” he said.

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

EU warns Greece to fix border ‘neglect’

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU executive concluded on Wednesday that Greece could face more border controls with other states of the free-travel Schengen zone in May if it does not fix “serious deficiencies” in its management of the area’s external frontier.

EU countries have been increasingly critical of Athens’ handling of the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two, with more than a million migrants reaching Europe last year, mainly through Greece.

“If the necessary action is not being taken and deficiencies persist, there is a possibility to … allow member states to temporarily close their borders,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told a news briefing.

He was speaking after the executive accepted a report saying cash-strapped Athens had “seriously neglected” its obligations to fellow Schengen states.

The use of that phrase could pave the way for EU governments to exercise the option of reinstalling controls on their national borders for up to two years once short-term measures currently in place expire in May.

Several EU member states have instituted emergency controls on their borders and warned they may effectively suspend Athens from the passport-free zone. Most of the irregular migrants arriving in the EU have come from Turkey via Greece and trekked northward to Germany.

Dombrovskis said Greece was not identifying or registering people arriving effectively, not uploading fingerprinting data to relevant bases systematically, and not checking travel documents properly and against key databases.

EU border agency Frontex says its latest mission to the Greek island of Lesbos in January showed improvements in registration procedures.

But EU officials carried out an assessment in Greece in November that lead to Wednesday’s conclusion that there were “serious deficiencies” in Greek frontier control.

SEALING GREECE OFF

The step of imposing border controls, under the as yet unused Article 26 of the Schengen code, can be taken for up to six months and can be renewed up to three times for a total of two years.

Dombrovskis said the Commission was intent on preserving Schengen, one of the EU’s key achievements, and said Greece had improved its border controls since November – but not enough.

The next step in the process would be for Schengen member states – 26 countries, most of which are also in the EU – to confirm the Commission’s conclusions in a majority vote. The executive would then recommend remedial measures and assess by May whether Athens had complied.

Greece has no land borders with the rest of the Schengen zone, so installing new frontier checks would affect only air and sea ports.

Diplomats and officials described the move to penalize tourism-dependent Greece as a way to raise pressure on Athens, which is already mired in a financial crisis, to better implement EU measures intended to identify and register all those arriving from Turkey.

The EU is also looking into using Frontex more to help guard the border between Greece and Macedonia, which is not a member of the EU or Schengen. Some Frontex personnel are already at Greece’s northern border, but the agency’s mandate does not allow for interventions in third countries.

Some diplomats said countries could send more police or border guards to Macedonia on the basis of bilateral agreements.

Frontex has a precedent from 2006, when it ran a naval mission in territorial waters off Senegal and Mauritania to prevent African migrants reaching Spain’s Canary Islands. That operation was carried out on the basis of bilateral agreements between Spain, Dakar and Nouakchott.

“Details would need to be worked out but there seems to be very little opposition to this idea, apart, of course, from Greece,” said one EU diplomat involved.

Athens says the influx is impossible to control and its migration minister, Yannis Mouzalas, warned this week that sealing his country off from Schengen would create a humanitarian crisis with thousands of people trapped in Greece.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

At least 43 migrants drown as boats capsize off Greek islands

ATHENS (Reuters) – At least 43 people, including 17 children, drowned when their boats capsized off two Greek islands near the Turkish coast on Friday, coastguards said, marking one of the deadliest days for migrants risking the perilous route to Europe from Turkey.

According to survivors’ testimonies, dozens were on board a wooden sailboat which went down off Kalolimnos, a small island in the Aegean Sea close to Turkey’s coast, one coastguard official said.

Twenty six people were rescued and at least 35 migrants drowned in one of the worst incidents in months, the official said. It was not clear why the vessel capsized, but witnesses said strong winds were blowing at the time.

Fishing vessels assisted the search and rescue operation which lasted hours.

“They weren’t wearing life jackets, I don’t understand. They couldn’t swim,” Michalis, a local fisherman, told Reuters.

He rescued three migrants but one of them, a 50-year old man, later died in his small fishing boat. “The hospital is now full of dead people.”

Survivors said that more people were missing, he said. “There must have been a lot of people on board. It was one of those closed yachts with a small hatch. You can imagine what happened if it had a lot of people on board,” the fisherman said.

In the sinking at Farmakonisi, another small island also close to the Turkish coast, six children and two women drowned when their wooden boat crashed on rocks shortly after midnight. Another 40 migrants on the vessel managed to swim to the shore.

“Once again, last night ruthless human smugglers at the Turkish coast crammed dozens of refugees and migrants in risky and unseaworthy vessels and led innocent people, even young children to perish,” the shipping ministry said in a statement.

The International Organization for Migration said the deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean already make this “the deadliest January on record”.

The latest incidents bring the number of people killed on the eastern Mediterranean route in the past year to at least 900, said IOM spokesman Joel Millman in Geneva.

The total number of arrivals in Europe by sea rose to about 37,000 in January, more than six times the combined figures for the same month in 2014 and 2015, usually a slow month due to the bad weather.

Fleeing war, thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short, but precarious, journey from Turkey to Greece’s islands, from which most continue to mainland Greece and northward into wealthier western Europe.

Winter conditions make the journey even more dangerous.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, George Georgiopoulos and Theodora Arvanitidou in Athens and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Greek Parliament Votes to Recognize Palestine as a State

Greece’s parliament is urging the country’s government to recognize Palestine as a state.

The move came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attended Tuesday’s session, according to a news release. While parliament approved a resolution asking Greece’s government “to speed up all necessary procedures towards the recognition of the State of Palestine,” the government still has to take that formal step. There’s no indication when or if that action will actually occur.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who also attended the session, called the gesture “a very important and historical step” in a news release. Addressing parliament, Abbas expressed gratitude for the vote, which he said sent “a message of support and solidarity” to Palestinians.

The resolution was approved one day after Abbas told reporters in Athens that Palestine would begin to issue “State of Palestine” passports before the end of 2016.

The Greek resolution notes that the country “has steadily supported the two-state solution,” which favors creating a Palestinian state separate from Israel. Such a state would be based on 1967 borders and have East Jerusalem as its capital, according to the adopted resolution.

Al-Jazeera reported that multiple other European parliaments have passed similar resolutions.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, condemned the action, telling French news agency AFP that Abbas was continuing chase “recognition which has no meaning in practice.”

“Instead of (Abbas) ceasing to incite and fund terror, he is following a flawed path that will lead him nowhere,” AFP quoted the deputy foreign minister as saying.

In September, the State of Palestine flag was raised at United Nations headquarters in New York. Israel dismissed that action as a photo opportunity.