LESBOS, Greece—Greece’s prime minister lashed out against European “ineptness” in handling the migration crisis Friday, after 22 people drowned in two shipwrecks Friday.
The Merchant Marine Ministry said 19 people were killed and 138 were rescued near the eastern Aegean Sea island of Kalymnos, in one of the worst accidents in Greek waters since the mass migrant flows started after the war in Syria.
At least three more people died when another migrant boat sank off the nearby island of Rhodes, and three more were missing. On the islet of Agathonissi, a fisherman recovered the body of a boy missing from yet another accident on Wednesday.
Nearly 600 people were rescued by the coast guard in the past 24 hours, while thousands more made it safely to the islands.
The death toll in the Aegean over the past three days has now reached nearly 50 — mostly children — while in Spain rescuers found the bodies of four migrants and are searching for 35 missing from a boat that ran into trouble trying to reach Spain from Morocco.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Europe of an “inability to defend its (humanitarian) values” by providing a safe alternative to the dangerous sea journeys.
“I want to express ... my endless grief at the dozens of deaths and the human tragedy playing out in our seas,” he told parliament. “The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe.”
Tsipras accused western countries of shedding “crocodile tears” over children dying in the Aegean but doing little for those who make it across.
“What about the tens of thousands of living children, who are cramming the roads of migration?” he said.
