5 children among 11 dead

Boat sinks off Turkey

ANKARA, March 25, (Agencies): Five children were among 11 Syrians killed after their plastic boat sank off Turkey’s Aegean coast on Friday, the Dogan news agency said, the first such reported incident in months on an illegal migrant route meant to have been all but shut down.

Television footage showed rescue workers standing next to bodies washed up on a beach near the coastal town of Kusadasi. The boat, believed to have been carrying 22 Syrian migrants, had been heading for Greece.

A baby in a critical condition was among the 11 people rescued alive, Dogan quoted district governor Muammer Aksoy as saying. He said 11 bodies had been recovered.

Dogan earlier said the authorities had detained two Turks suspected of organising the voyage after they swam ashore. The news agency initially said 12 people had been killed.

Deal

A deal between Turkey and the European Union on curbing illegal migration, struck a year ago, helped significantly reduce the migrant flow to Europe via the Greek islands. Some, however, are still trying to make the perilous voyage.

More than 3,620 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey so far this year, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, and about 60 arrive on Greek islands each day. At least 173,000 people, mostly Syrians, arrived in 2016.

Europe’s deteriorating relations with Turkey could endanger the migrant deal, under which Ankara is supposed to help control migration in return for the promise of accelerated EU membership talks and aid.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who accuses Brussels of failing to keep its promises, said on Thursday that Turkey would review all political and administrative ties with the EU after an April referendum, including the migrant deal. Erdogan has been angered by Germany and the Netherlands cancelling planned rallies on their territory by Turkish officials seeking to drum up support for a “yes” vote in the referendum, which is on constitutional changes that would extend the powers of the presidency.

Meanwhile, Hundreds of migrants may have died off Libya’s coast, a Spanish aid organization said Friday, and Turkish media reported that 11 migrants died after a boat sank in the Aegean.

Video footage from DHA in Turkey showed a half-dozen covered bodies that were laid out near ambulances. The migrants’ boat capsized near the Turkish resort town of Kusadasi and nine people were rescued, the Turkish Coast Guard Command said. It said two people, believed to be smugglers, were detained.

Concerns about the missing migrants near Libya rose after Spain*s Proactiva Open Arms group found five bodies near two capsized boats on Thursday. Proactiva spokeswoman Laura Lanuza said the German aid organization Jugend Rettet found a sixth body in the area Friday.

The International Organization for Migrations said it had no confirmation of the two boats mentioned by Proactiva near the Libyan coast, but believed the bodies could be part of an earlier wreckage. About 120 people were believed to be on board a smuggler’s boat that capsized on March 21, the IOM said, but only 54 were rescued.

Meanwhile, the search for a third vessel reported missing in the area has so far proved futile.

Lanuza said their vessel was expected to arrive Saturday at the Italian port of Catania to hand over the bodies of the five young men who had drowned. Other agencies, meanwhile, continued the search for more possible victims off Libya.

The UN refugee agency said it was “deeply alarmed” by the reports. Both it and Proactiva said they feared the death toll may be much higher as migrant dinghies are normally crammed with around 120 people each.

The agency cited NGO sources as saying the five floating corpses of the young men had been recovered 14 miles (22 kilometers) off the Libyan coast near two empty and partially submerged rubber dinghies.

Lanuza said the boats were found Thursday morning, north of the Libyan town of Sabratha. The five men of African origin were estimated to be between 16 and 25 years old and appeared to have drowned, she said.

The Red Crescent in Libya, and the Libyan coast guard, said Friday that they had no reports about dead migrants or capsized boats in Libyan territorial waters.

Also:

ROME: A four-year-old migrant girl who arrived in Italy alone from northern Africa is to be reunited with her mother on Monday, months after a stroke of luck allowed authorities to trace the woman, Italian police said.

Police had initially hoped the two could be reunited last Christmas but bureaucracy delayed the reunion, said police inspector Maria Volpe who heads operations involving unaccompanied migrant children arriving in Sicily.

“It has been like giving birth,” Volpe told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Friday, referring to the lengthy procedure to sort out the woman’s travel papers.

The girl, identified only as Oumoh, was one of 25,000 unaccompanied minors who reached Italy in 2016.

Her mother had taken the girl from their family home in Ivory Coast to save her from female genital mutilation but the two got separated on the way to Europe, police said.

Upon arriving in Tunisia, Oumoh’s mother entrusted the child to a friend and headed back home to fetch some belongings.

Before she returned the friend left for Italy with the girl, but the two got also separated before arriving in the country, police said.

The coastguard rescued Oumoh from a rickety boat in the Mediterranean last November and brought her to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

Oumoh’s identity remained a mystery for a few days until another girl recognised a photo of her while playing with the phone of the head of Lampedusa’s reception centre.