At least 24 drown in migrant boat sinking off Istanbul
(ISTANBUL) - At least 24 migrants, including children, drowned on Monday when a boat taking them towards European Union waters sank in the Black Sea just off Istanbul, Turkish officials said.
Reports said those on board were mainly Afghans in search of a better life in the EU who had paid several thousand euros each to people smugglers for a seat on the overloaded vessel.
Seven people were rescued from the stricken boat, which had set off earlier from Istanbul and had travelled through the Bosphorus Strait on its way to Romania, the coastguard said in a statement.
Rescuers, aided by local fishing vessels, were still searching for at least nine people missing from the boat, which sank three nautical miles north of the northern entrance to the Bosphorus.
They had set off earlier from Bakirkoy, an Istanbul suburb on the Sea of Marmara side of the Bosphorus.
Twelve children and seven women were reported to have been on board. Some reports said Syrians and Turkmen could also have been on board as well as Afghans.
- 'Boat was too small' -
The official Anatolia news agency said that rescuers, who had been alerted to the accident by fishermen, found the vessel was already semi-submerged on arrival.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the boat to sink with media citing overloading, bad weather conditions or even a collision with another vessel in the busy shipping lane as possibilities.
Anatolia said prosecutors believed that the vessel could have had leaks.
"There were lots of children on board. The wind is having a bad effect on the rescue efforts. The boat was very, very small, not enough for 40 people," a captain involved in the rescue efforts, Ali Saruhan, told CNN-Turk television.
Emre Can Kolcu, a member of a fishing crew, told NTV that after the accident "bags, shoes, coats and discarded life jackets covered the sea."
He said it was likely that the children on board had been given adult life jackets that were too big and they had simply slipped out of them once in the water.
Turkey has become a hub for illegal immigrants who aspire to reach Europe in the search for a better life.
NTV television said that the migrants had paid people smugglers 7,000 euros ($8,750) each to transport them towards Romania and then onwards to wealthier western European countries.
But the journey is frequently perilous, and hundreds of immigrants have drowned en route to Europe in recent years.
The accident has come amid strong debate within the EU about whether to continue migrant rescue missions, on the grounds that such operations encourage the migrants to make the hazardous voyages in the first place.
Britain said last week it will not support planned EU search and rescue operations to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea as they try to reach Europe.
Meanwhile, Italy on Friday confirmed the end of its search and rescue operation "Mare Nostrum", which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of boat migrants in the Mediterranean.