Five-year-old girl amongst 13 refugees killed in boat collision

A five-year-old girl is among 13 refugees who died after the boat they were travelling in collided with a ferry off the Turkish coast on Sunday, officials said.

Nikos Lagkadianos, a spokesperson for the Greek coastguard, said the child was pulled from the sea unconscious and died later in hospital. The survivors told officials that 26 people had boarded their vessel from Turkey, which sank when water leaked into it, leaving 13 passengers unaccounted for.

The latest disaster came the day after another young child, a four-year-old Syrian girl, was washed up dead on a Turkish beach on the other side of the Aegean Sea.

The unnamed girl’s body was found in Cesme, along the coast from where three-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowned with his brother and mother.

The Coast Guard was also searching for another 27 people missing after their boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos.

Coast guard officials said some 29 people were rescued in the two incidents. Ten people were rescued from the narrow strait between Lesbos and Turkey, and another passenger swam ashore in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Of the 300,000 refugees and migrants who have arrived in Greece so far this year, more than 93,000 have landed in Lesbos, where the infrastructure is unable to cope.

Meanwhile, the Libyan coastguard said it rescued 215 refugees Sunday from two boats in the Mediterranean, including more than 50 women, a day after Italy said over 4,500 people were saved off Libya.

The UNHCR says more than 442,440 people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe so far this year and 2,921 have died attempting the voyage.