ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s coastguard rescued 18 migrants and recovered the body of one dead woman on Friday after their boat capsized off an island in the Aegean Sea.
Coastguard vessels and a military helicopter carried out the rescue operation off the island of Agathonisi after the migrants sent a distress signal earlier on Friday, a coastguard official said.
During Europe’s 2015 migration crisis, European governments struggled to cope with an influx of more than 1 million people, mostly Syrian refugees who crossed from Turkey to Greece, overwhelming security and welfare networks.
Migrant flows to Greece had dropped significantly before resurging this year. Nearly 40,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece so far in 2023, mostly crossing from Turkey by sea, according to data from United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.
(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Gareth Jones)
