Greek coastguard recovers one dead, rescues 27 on Lesbos island

Greek coastguard officials recovered the body of one man and rescued 27 people from a rocky beach on the island of Lesbos after they apparently arrived by boat from Turkey, authorities said on Tuesday.

“We have rescued 11 men, 15 women and a child. They’re all in good health,” a coastguard official said, adding that the migrants are believed to be from Somalia.

Greece was on the front line of a migration crisis in 2015-2016 when hundreds of thousands of people used Lesbos, a few miles from the Turkish coast, and nearby islands in the northern Aegean Sea as the main entry point to Europe.

The influx of refugees and migrants to Greece fell by 80% last year compared to 2019. But more than 15,000 arrived by sea and land, data from the United Nations refugees agency UNHCR showed, and even in winter some are still attempting the risky sea passage on dinghies from Turkey.

Turkey hosts more than three million refugees and migrants and more than 90,000 are also in Greece, mostly housed in overcrowded camps while waiting for their applications for asylum to be processed.

via Reuters