10 kids among 24 migrants dead in boat sinking

The bodies of 24 migrants, including 10 children, were discovered off the Greek island of Samos on Thursday after their boat capsized, the Greek Coast Guard said.

Eleven people from a dinghy carrying 45 people were still listed as missing following the latest tragedy involving overladen migrant boats crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece.

Ten people were rescued unharmed. Authorities initially said they had found 12 bodies but the number rose quickly as rescuers combed the waters for the missing.

There were “five boys and five girls among the victims, while 10 people were pulled from the water unharmed, but in a state of shock,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said.

The alert was raised by one of the survivors, who managed to swim to shore.

Greek ships and two vessels from the European border agency Frontex took part in the rescue operation.

There was no information yet on the migrants’ country of origin.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Navy rescued 290 migrants and recovered six bodies from the water near a half-sunken rubber boat on Thursday, the first sea deaths recorded on the North Africa to Italy route in 2016, a spokesperson said.

Last week, 44 people drowned in a single day when three migrant boats ran into trouble in Greek waters.

On Wednesday, rescuers found the bodies of seven drowned migrants, including two children, after their boat sank off the Greek island of Kos.

The latest tragedy comes as swamped Greek authorities are under pressure from their European counterparts to staunch the migrant flow.

The European Commission on Wednesday hit out at Athens, saying it had “seriously neglected” its duty to protect the bloc’s frontiers and raising the prospect of other EU members imposing border controls for up to two years.

Sweden said it expects to expel up to 80,000 migrants whose asylum requests will likely be rejected.

As the continent grapples with efforts to stem a record flow of migrants, Swedish interior minister Anders Ygeman said the mass expulsions of people who arrived in the Scandinavian country in 2015 would require the use of specially chartered aircraft. The deportations would be staggered over several years, Mr Ygeman said.