More than 70 toddlers have drown attempting the same crossing between Turkey and Greece as three-year-old Syrian boy ‘Alan Kurdi’, whose face down body was found on a Turkish beach months ago, prompting worldwide outrage about the plight of refugees travelling to Europe.
According to ‘Save the Children’, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says more than 70 children died trying to make the crossing from Turkey to Greece between September 2 and October 26.
The number of deaths has been rising, with bad weather creating further dangers for those crossing from Turkey to Greece through already-perilous sea.
In a statement issued on Thursday night, Save the Children said the short Aegean Sea crossing was becoming more deadlier for the refugees.
The statement comes in a wake of at least 34 people gone missing after their boat sank in one of the largest maritime disasters since a massive refugee influx began this year on Thursday.
Five children, two men and one woman were known to have drowned after the wooden boat, crammed with more than 280 people, sank near the island of Lesbos on Wednesday. Eight more people drowned at two other locations, bringing the day’s total dead to 16.
Though the crossing from Turkey to Greece is short, the waters are increasingly dangerous and sadly we’re going to see more of these helpless deaths.”At least five more died in Wednesday night’s incident.
“What we need are safe and legal routes for refugees who are travelling to Europe, and in order to stop the ,” O’Sullivan said.
“I have seen children sleeping in the mud under a flimsy bit of cardboard, and kids shivering with blue lips and hands. We expect the situation to get much worse as winter really bites,” O’Sullivan added.
Nobody knows who is fighting whom for whom in Syria. What is known is that precious little has been done to stop the fighting. Since 2011, over 11 million Syrians—roughly half the population of have fled the country.
More than 500,000 refugees and migrants have entered Greece through its outlying islands since January, travelling on to central and northern Europe as part of the biggest humanitarian crisis on the continent in two decades.