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At least 16 migrants and refugees killed in Greek shipwreck Migration News

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The bodies of 12 men, three women and a child have been recovered from the area.

At least 16 people have been killed after their boat capsized on the Greek island of Paros in the middle of the Aegean Sea, the third largest maritime disaster involving migrants and refugees this week, the country’s coastguard reported.

Authorities conducted a search and rescue operation in northwestern Paros on Friday night. Greece’s Athens news agency said the bodies of 12 men, three women and a child had been removed from the area.

Eighty people were on board, according to coastguards, on their way from Turkey to Italy.

Air and sea assets were deployed to the area, the coastguard said early Saturday morning.

Greece is one of the main access routes to the European Union for refugees and migrants from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, although the flow has slowed since 2015-2016 when more than a million people moved to other EU countries.

Earlier on Friday, Greek authorities said so He recovered 11 bodies A sailboat carrying refugees sank on an island in southern Greece on Thursday from the site of another shipwreck.

Eighty people were rescued in the operation.

From Tuesday to Wednesday night, a ship believed to be carrying 50 refugees It sank on the island of Folegandros, dozens were feared extinct.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR says the Folegandros accident was the worst in the Aegean Sea this year.

“This shipwreck reminds us that people continue to embark on dangerous journeys in search of safety,” Adriano Silvestri, UNHCR’s assistant representative in Greece, told AFP.

More than 2,500 people have been killed or missing at sea in an attempt to reach Europe from January to November this year, according to UNHCR estimates.

Nearly one million people, mostly Syrian refugees, arrived in the European Union in 2015 after moving to the Greek islands near Turkey.



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