A woman died and 18 people were rescued when a refugee boat sank off the Greek island of Agathonissi in the southern Aegean Sea on Friday, port police said.
The 18 people rescued by the Greek coast guard had to be taken to the nearby island of Samos, an official from the port police press office told AFP.
There was initially no information available about the identity of the passengers or the circumstances of the sinking.
It occurred at around 0600 GMT, four nautical miles off the coast of Agathonissi in the Dodecanese archipelago.
Like other Mediterranean countries, Greece has seen a sharp increase in the number of migrant and refugee arrivals this year: 38,448 people between January and early November compared to 18,700 in all of 2022, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
Despite rescue operations for boats in difficulty carried out by the Greek authorities with the help of Frontex (European Border Surveillance Agency), numerous fatal shipwrecks occur in the Aegean Sea in the eastern Mediterranean.
One of the deadliest events in the area occurred on June 14: At least 82 people drowned and hundreds more disappeared when a trawler leaving Libya for Italy capsized within 15 minutes, 47 nautical miles from Pylos in the south of mainland Greece sank.
This tragedy has raised many questions about the responsibility of the Greek authorities, who are regularly accused of carrying out illegal pushbacks of migrants in order to limit the number of arrivals on Greek soil.
In October, four people died and two were reported missing when two refugee boats capsized off the coast of the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Symi.