Greek coast guard says 12 migrants die in Aegean sea crossings

ATHENS

Twelve migrants died on Oct. 19 attempting to cross the Aegean Sea, including six people on a boat which collided with a police vessel, authorities said.

A baby and four women were among six people who died off the island of Lesbos on Monday following the collision, a coast guard official told AFP.

The other six dead — five men and a woman — were on a small boat that capsized off the island of Samos, the coast guard added. Fourteen people on the boat, one of them a presumed Iranian organizer, were rescued.

The coast guard official said that in the incident off Lesbos, "a speed boat carrying migrants collided with the port side of a police patrol vessel". The official said eight people were rescued.

There was no indication of the nationalities of either the victims or people rescued.

The Aegean is a much-used route for migrants setting out from Türkiye hoping to reach Europe. There have been many deaths.

At least 15 migrants died in February off the Greek island of Chios when their boat collided with a coastguard patrol vessel.

One person died and 25 remain missing after a boat filled with migrants sank off the island of Gavdos, near Crete in September.

"Smugglers are putting migrants in grave danger," Thanos Plevris, the migration minister who backs a very strict migration policy, told Ertnews public broadcaster, praising the coast guard.

"They are doing everything they can to save lives whilst at the same time protecting our borders," he argued.

Greece is one of five European countries — with Austria, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands — working to set up detention centres in Africa to which migrants whose asylum claims have been turned down can be sent.

This initiative does not however have unanimous EU support, with France notably opposed.

According to the EU Agency for Asylum, the 27 member states received 332,000 applications for international protection in the first half of this year, a 17 percent decrease on the same period in 2025 as countries tighten their migration policies.