Illegal migrant
\nATHENS
\nThe death toll from two migrant boat wrecks in Greek waters this week \u2014 one of which prompted a dramatic cliffside rescue \u2014 has climbed to at least 23, the coast guard said on Friday.
\nFive of the bodies were found at the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula, where a sailboat believed to have 95 people on board sank on Wednesday night, said a coast guard spokesman.
\nThe boat went down beneath a huge vertical cliff and survivors \u2014 mainly from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan \u2014 were hauled to safety with ropes and a construction crane in a frantic pre-dawn operation amid gale-force winds early on Thursday.
\nAdverse weather conditions hampered the search for more survivors on on October 7.
\nAnother 18 people, most of them women, died when a boat carrying 40 people sank near the Aegean island of Lesbos.
\nState TV ERT said the group were Somalis and only ten of them wore lifejackets.
\nGreece, Italy and Spain are among the countries used by people fleeing Africa and the Middle East in search of safety and better lives in the EU. The Greek coast guard has said it has rescued about 1,500 people in the first eight months of the year, up from below 600 last year.
\nOfficials note that smugglers now often take the longer and more perilous route south, sailing out from Lebanon instead of Turkey to bypass EU patrols in the Aegean Sea and reach Italy.<\/p>\n
In December, at least 30 people perished in three separate migrant boat sinkings in the Aegean.<\/p>\n
The precise death toll is unknown as some bodies are never recovered, or drift ashore only weeks later.<\/p>\n
Greece has rejected persistent claims from rights groups that many migrants are illegally pushed back to Turkey without being allowed to lodge asylum claims.<\/p>\n
Southern European nations \u2014 Greece, Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus \u2014 expect 160,000 asylum seekers to arrive on their shores this year, Greek Migration Minister Mitarachi told reporters last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Illegal migrant ATHENS The death toll from two migrant boat wrecks in Greek waters this week \u2014 one of which prompted a dramatic cliffside rescue \u2014 has climbed to at least 23, the coast guard said on Friday. Five of the bodies were found at the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-288275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n