Turkish coast guards spotted a boat in distress during their daily search and rescue flights over the Aegean sea and saved a lone migrant clinging to the upturned bow of his sinking boat.
The coast guard said 34 people had been aboard the boat, 27 died and six were still missing, trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday 8 February. Elsewhere in the Aegean, Italian coastguards rescued 23 Pakistani migrants off the coast of the Greek island of Kos. They pulled two small dinghies, packed with migrants, next to the larger coastguard vessel before hauling them onboard.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday (9 February) it estimates over 76,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea through the first six weeks of 2016. The daily average of nearly 2,000 arrivals is nearly 10 times the daily average of a year ago.
