ATHENS: At least 15 people, including a child, drowned when an inflatable boat carrying refugees and migrants sank off Greece’s Lesbos island, officials said on Monday.
Eight bodies were recovered in Greek territory and another seven in Turkish waters, a Greek coast guard official said. The boat is believed to have set sail from Turkey late on Sunday.
Citing survivors, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said 25 people were on board. Two survivors, one of whom is pregnant, were from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the agency said.
Though fewer than 10 nautical miles separate Lesbos from Turkish shores, hundreds of people have drowned trying to make the crossing since the refugee crisis began in 2015.
In that year, Lesbos was the main gateway into the EU for nearly a million Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans.
A deal in March 2016 between the EU and Ankara has all but closed the route down and just over 4,800 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey this year, according to UNHCR data. An average of 20 arrive on Greek islands each day.
At least 173,000 people, mostly Syrians, landed in Greece in 2016. The number of refugees and migrants in Greece has swelled to about 62,000 in the last year, about 13,000 of whom are in camps on five eastern Aegean islands waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.
Violence has broken out in overcrowded camps on several occasions, as have protests against asylum delays. Twelve Syrian Kurds living in Lesbos’s Moria camp for months began a hunger strike on Friday, the Athens News Agency reported.
15 drown as migrant boat sinks off Greece’s Lesbos island
15 drown as migrant boat sinks off Greece’s Lesbos island
UK warship to leave for Cyprus next week: officials
- HMS Dragon, a Type 45 defense destroyer, will sail to aid Britain’s “defensive operations”
- Opposition lawmakers have accused the government of being too slow to deploy additional resources
LONDON: A UK warship due to be sent to Cyprus amid the US and Israel’s war with Iran will not set sail from Britain until next week, Western officials said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Tuesday that he was deploying HMS Dragon, a Type 45 defense destroyer to aid Britain’s “defensive operations” in the region.
Starmer also said he was sending two Wildcat helicopters with counter-drone capabilities.
The announcement came after several drone attacks from Iran targeted UK allies in the Middle East and after the UK Royal Air Force base Akrotiri was struck overnight Sunday to Monday.
Opposition lawmakers have accused the government of being too slow to deploy additional resources after the war started on Saturday with no British warship in the region.
The destroyer is being resupplied with ammunition and will sail next week, the officials told reporters in London.
“We’ve had to change weapon systems on it, finish welding, get it up and running, and get it sailing as fast as possible,” Defense Minister Al Carns told Sky News.
Its voyage to the eastern Mediterranean is expected to take several days.
Starmer refused to allow the Americans to use UK air bases to launch the initial strikes on Iran on Saturday.
He later agreed to a US request to use two British military bases — one in southwest England and the other in the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean — for a “specific and limited defensive purpose.”
The officials said Wednesday that US bombers have not yet used those bases to launch missions but they are expected to do so in the coming days.
They also said that the drone, which caused little damage and no casualties when it hit the runway at Akrotiri, had not been launched from Iran.
A Cypriot government source said Monday that the drones had been launched from Lebanon, “most likely” by Hezbollah, a historical ally of Iran in the Middle East.
