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13 children among 22 migrants drowned off Greece

– A watery grave? –

Faced with yet another “humanitarian tragedy”, Tsipras said it was crucial to prevent the Aegean Sea from becoming a graveyard for people fleeing war and misery and seeking safety in northern Europe.

“As a European leader, I feel shame over Europe’s inability to defend its values,” Tsipras told the Greek parliament.

“Our first duty is to save lives and not to allow the Aegean to become a cemetery… for that we are not asking for even a euro” from our European partners, he said.

He also underlined the urgent need of having Turkey “respect its commitments” to halting the flow of people leaving its territory by boat and stressing Athens’ willingness to be “a link between the EU and Turkey” on the matter.

With the winter weather whipping up gales and worsening conditions at sea, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said there was an “urgent need” to strengthen search and rescue capacity in the area.

“We have warned for weeks that an already bad situation could get even worse if desperate refugees and migrants must continue to resort to smugglers who send them out to sea despite the worsening weather,” said Alessandra Morelli, UNHCR’s Senior Operations Coordinator for Greece in a statement released on Thursday.

“Our fears are now being realised. Nearly every day now we are seeing children, parents, the elderly and the young dying as they try to reach Europe.”

Since the start of the year, 560,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece by sea, out of over 700,000 who have reached Europe via the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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More than 3,200 people have died during the perilous crossings although most of the deaths have occurred on the longer sea route from Libya to Italy.

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