A refugee boat near the Turkish coast sinks: Babies die

• Six persons, mostly children, have perished.
• A boat carrying refugees from Lebanon bound for Italy capsized off the coast of southwestern Turkey.
• The coast guard stated.

According to the Turkish coastguard, six persons, mostly children, have perished after a boat carrying refugees from Lebanon bound for Italy capsized off the coast of southwestern Turkey.

The coast guard said in a statement that although search and rescue operations for five missing individuals continued on Tuesday with two boats and a helicopter, 73 refugees and migrants were saved in four lifeboats.

According to the statement, without specifying the migrants’ nationality, one woman, three children, and two babies perished.

According to the rescued refugees and migrants, the refugees initially left Lebanon on Saturday towards Italy but needed to refuel off the shore of Rhodes island in Greece.

The Turkish coast guard said that the Greek coastguard had put the refugees in four lifeboats and left them close to Turkish territorial seas after responding to the boats’ cries for assistance.

The Turkish claim was rejected by the Greek coast guard.

More than 30,000 refugees and migrants have been stopped this year thus far, according to data on the Turkish coastguard’s website, more than twice as many as during the same period last year.

The Turkish government accuses Greece of forcibly returning migrants and refugees to its territory in the Mediterranean Sea, a charge that Athens consistently refutes.

Meanwhile, Greek authorities assert that Ankara ignores refugees trying to enter Europe through its territory, asserting that Turkey’s activities are in violation of a 2016 agreement on the subject reached between Ankara and the European Union.

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