|
| A Greek police man gives instuction as migrants whose boat stalled at sea while crossing from Turkey to Greece approach a shore of the island of Lesbos, Greece, on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015. A boat with 46 migrants or refugees has sunk Sunday in Greece and the coast guard says it is searching for 26 missing off the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos. |
ATHENS, Greece
(AP) -- Disasters at sea claimed the lives of dozens of migrants on
Sunday, as desperate people fleeing war and poverty braved the risky
journey to seek sanctuary in Europe.
Thirteen
migrants died after their boat collided with a ferry off the Turkish
coast, officials there said, while the Greek coast guard fanned out in
the choppy waters of the Aegean Sea searching for another 27 people
missing after their boat sank off the island of Lesbos.
Coast
guard officials said some 29 people were rescued in the two incidents,
which followed another sinking near Lesbos Saturday, in which a
5-year-old girl drowned. Between 10 and 12 people went missing.
The
events highlight the risks that those fleeing conflict and poverty in
the Middle East, Africa and Asia are willing to take in hopes of
reaching sanctuary in Europe. Men, women and children continue to take
the perilous sea journey despite the fact that thousands of earlier
migrants find themselves blocked by closed border crossings in the
Balkans.
Hungary's decision to shut its border
with Serbia on Sept. 15 set off a chain reaction in Croatia and
Slovenia that has forced people fleeing violence in their homelands to
rush from one European border to the next as they desperately try to
find their way north before the rules change again.
Thousands
are on the move all over southeastern Europe as authorities struggle to
respond. Some 11,000 migrants crossed from Hungary into Austria in the
24-hour period ending on midnight Saturday, with at least another 7,000
expected Sunday.
In the Austrian border
village of Nickelsdorf people arrived by foot after completing a
half-an-hour walk from the Hungarian town of Hegyeshalom. From there,
buses and trains take them to emergency shelters in Vienna and other
parts of Austria.
Meanwhile, leaders all across the region are sniping at one another, underscoring the sense of crisis and disarray.
Hungary's
erection of razor-wire fences is deeply straining its ties with
neighboring countries, who feel the problem of the huge flow of migrants
is being unfairly pushed onto them. After completing a fence along the
border with Serbia, Hungary is now building fences along its borders
with Croatia and Romania.
After lashing out
against Croatian officials, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto
is now trading barbs with his Romanian counterpart over the fence.
Romanian
Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu on Saturday called the border closure
an "autistic and unacceptable act" that violated the spirit of the
European Union.
"We would expect more modesty
from a foreign minister whose prime minister is currently facing trial,"
Szijjarto said. That was a reference to corruption charges filed
recently against Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta.
"We
are a state that is more than 1,000 years old that throughout its
history has had to defend not only itself, but Europe as well many
times," Szijjarto added. "That's the way it's going to be now, whether
the Romanian foreign minister likes it or not."
The Hungarian Foreign Ministry has called in the Romanian ambassador for a consultation on Monday.
