5 dead, including 4 children, in the sinking of 2 migrant boats off the Greek islands near the Turkish coast

ATHENS, GREECE — Five people, including four children, died and dozens more were rescued Monday in two separate incidents involving migrant boats heading to Greek islands from neighboring Turkish coasts, Greek authorities said.

The coast guard said four people died and 18 others were rescued after a boat carrying migrants capsized northeast of the Greek island of Lesbos, near the Turkish coast. Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said all four were children: an 8-year-old boy and three girls aged 14, 8 and 11 months.

Greek Shipping Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said the coastguard carried out the rescue in Turkish waters. Turkish coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou said the Turkish coast guard did not carry out a rescue operation and so a Greek patrol boat picked up the passengers.

The survivors were taken to Mytilene, the main port of Lesbos, where two people were transferred to a local hospital.

Earlier Monday around 1 a.m., a coast guard patrol boat spotted a dinghy carrying 37 people off the eastern Aegean island of Samos, the coast guard said. The passengers fell into the water when they saw the patrol boat, triggering a rescue operation.

A woman and a young boy were pulled from the water unconscious and Coast Guard officers attempted to resuscitate them, authorities said. The woman died but the boy survived and was transferred to a hospital on Samos with nine other survivors, the coast guard said.

“We express our deepest sadness” for the five deaths, Marinakis said during a regular press briefing. He praised the coastguard for their “superhuman efforts” to save lives at sea. “It is imperative that the dismal smuggling networks which exploit vulnerable people are attacked at their roots,” he said.

Over the weekend, the coast guard said it had picked up dozens of people from boats near islands in the eastern Aegean Sea, part of a surge in new arrivals over the two last months.

It said it had recovered 20 people from a dinghy off the coast of Lesvos on Sunday, and 11 other people from another dinghy that sank near the same island on Saturday.

Two more boats arrived in Samos on Saturday, the coast guard said, one carrying 35 people and the other 21 people.

For decades, Greece has been a preferred gateway to the European Union for people fleeing conflict or poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia and hoping for a better life in Europe.

More than 14,000 people have reached Greece by land and sea this year, according to United Nations figures. This represents about a tenth of the total successful crossings of the Mediterranean, most of which – around 104,000 – were to Italy. Arrivals in Greece for the whole of 2022 stood at 19,000.

In June, a damaged fishing trawler heading from Libya to Italy with around 500 to 750 people on board sank in international waters off southwest Greece. Only 104 survivors were found and Greek authorities were heavily criticized for failing to evacuate the ship in time.

The government has attributed the increase in migrant numbers since then to better summer weather and smugglers taking advantage of increased traffic in small Aegean boats during the tourist season.

After nearly a million people entered Greece at the height of the 2015 European migration crisis, with the vast majority hoping to move north to wealthier European countries, Greece increased patrols along the maritime and land border with Turkey to stop arrivals.

Human rights and migrant groups have denounced the government for carrying out summary expulsions of people arriving in the country without allowing them to seek asylum, an accusation the government has strongly denied.