17 Children, 9 Adults Drown as Refugee Boat Sinks While Traveling From Turkey to Greece
Seventeen refugee children drowned this week after their boat capsized off of the coast of Greece due to choppy seas.
The drowning of the immigrant children is the latest tragedy to come from the ongoing Middle East refugee crisis.
Officials announced that at least 17 children and nine adults drowned this week when three boats traveling from Turkey to Greece hit rough seas and began to take on water.
While authorities were able to rescue an additional 157 people from the sinking boats, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed "shame" over the climbing death toll that has become apart of the immigrant crisis.
"As a European leader, I feel shame over Europe's inability to defend its values," Tsipras said this week in a statement to the Greek Parliament.
"Our first duty is to save lives and not to allow the Aegean to become a cemetery," the prime minister added.
As winter brings rougher seas, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has called on countries to step up their search and rescue missions at sea to look for sinking ships.
"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," Alessandra Morelli, UNHCR's Senior Operations Coordinator for Greece , said in a statement this week, as reported by Al-Jazeera News. "Our fears are now being realized. Nearly every day now we are seeing children, parents, the elderly and the young dying as they try to reach Europe."
