Six children, 2 adults killed as migrant boat sinks near Greek island of Samos

A Greek Coast Guard ship takes part in a search and rescue operation following a shipwreck, where at least eight migrants drowned off the island of Samos, Greece, November 25, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Eight people, including six children, died when a small boat carrying an unspecified number of migrants sank off the coast of the Greek island of Samos, officials said Monday.

In a separate incident on a different island, an elderly man died as a group of 27 migrants made landfall in a small boat, the coast guard said. Nobody was reported missing.

The coast guard said 36 survivors from the first incident were found on a rocky shoreline on Samos, while three others were rescued earlier. It was not immediately clear whether anyone else was still missing. The nationalities of the people on the boat were not known.

“A patrol vessel, a lifeboat, a navy ship, a helicopter and land crews were searching for potential missing people, as survivors were unable to provide an exact number of how many migrants had been on the boat,” the Coast Guard said. Authorities confirmed the recovery of the bodies of six children and two adult women.

Greece’s Minister for Migration Nikos Panagiotopoulos deplored the incident and pledged tougher action against organised migrant-smuggling groups.

“The shipwreck on Samos, with the loss of eight innocent lives, including six children, fills us with sadness and anger,” he said. “The unscrupulous criminals who trade in human lives will meet with our determination to eradicate (their activities).”

Samos and other islands in the eastern Aegean Sea serve as key transit points for migrants entering the European Union illegally from the nearby Turkish coast.

Migrant crossings have increased in recent months, with Greek officials attributing the rise to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Also Monday, the coast guard said one elderly man died during the disembarkation of a group of 27 migrants from a small boat on the eastern island of Lesbos. The other 26 migrants were found in good health and nobody was reported missing. The causes of the man’s death were unclear.

According to United Nations data, more than 54,000 people have entered Greece illegally so far by sea or land this year. Most arrive in small boats from Turkey, although there has been an increase in Mediterranean crossings from Libya — a longer and riskier journey.

In the whole of 2023, almost 49,000 people arrived in Greece illegally.