Orange with Media Services, published Saturday 17 December 2022 at 20:59
The tragic discovery came after a boat carrying migrants mostly from Africa sank.
On Friday December 16, a two-month-old boy was found dead off the Greek island of Lesvos. The infant was transported to the hospital, where the death was pronounced, said doctor Theodoros Nousias.
A Zodiac carrying migrants, mostly from Africa, overturned when it struck rocks in the Fara area, sources at Lesbos’ migrant reception center say.
According to the Coast Guard’s latest report, which initially spoke of 34 rescued migrants, 30 men, women and children were found safe during the rescue operations. Two other people, slightly injured, were also rescued, bringing the number of survivors to 32.
The NGO Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) accused the Greek security forces of preventing their teams from reaching migrants at sea for two hours. “We will never know if those two hours would have allowed us to save the baby’s life,” the NGO said. The NGO ensures that 16 people were still on board, including the baby’s mother, and that these people were missing.
360 people have drowned in the eastern Mediterranean since early 2022
According to the Greek Coast Guard, 1,500 people were rescued in the first 8 months of 2022, compared to just under 600 last year. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 360 people have drowned since the beginning of the year fleeing wars and poverty in Africa or Asia towards Europe in the eastern Mediterranean.
Human tragedies are increasing due to the risks migrants take when boarding makeshift boats in stormy or even raging seas in autumn and winter. At least 30 people died in two shipwrecks off the islands of Lesvos and Kythera on October 11. During this latest shipwreck, which killed at least eight people, dozens of survivors, mostly from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, stranded at the bottom of a cliff were winched up by rescuers.
In early November, two simultaneous shipwrecks off the islands of Samos and Euboea killed more than 21 people and left dozens missing. Around 500 migrants were rescued at sea off Crete in late November, prompting Athens to ask for European “solidarity” for their care.