ISTANBUL: At least 24 migrants, including children, drowned yesterday 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.
The official Anatolia news agency said that rescuers, who were 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.
AFP
