Bodies of at least 36 migrants, including children, found on coast of Turkey

Authorities recovered the bodies Tuesday of atleast 36 migrants who drowned off Turkey after their boatsoverturned in rough waters as they tried to reach the Greek islandof Lesbos, officials and news reports said. Twelve others wererescued.

Nine bodies, including those of children, washed up on a beach inthe resort town of Ayvalik early in the morning, promptingauthorities to dispatch coast guard boats and gendarmerie officialsto search the area by sea and by land forpossible survivors.

Seven other bodies were washed up on a shore at Dikili, a resortabout 50 kilometres south of Ayvalik, thevictims of asecond migrant tragedy, the private Dogan news agency reported. Thedead included women andchildren, the agency said.

By late afternoon, the gendarmerie forces had recovered a totalof 29 bodies in the area while seven others were foundby the coastguard, a coast guard statement said, without providing details.

Around 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece lastyear, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over fromTurkey in frailboats.

Undeterred by the bitter cold and the rough winter seas, migrantsare continuing to risk the journey to Greece in the hope of a betterfuture in Europe. Most of them are Syrian refugees escaping thecivil war.

Rising death toll

The International Organization for Migration estimates that 3,771migrants overall died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea toEurope last year. It says that makes it the deadliest year on recordfor migrants crossing theMediterranean, with the number of deathsrising from 3,279 in 2014.

The IOM said 2,892, or 77 per cent, of the deaths last year wereon the central Mediterranean route, mainly involvingpeople crossingfrom Libya. However, there were 805 deaths in the easternMediterranean, accounting for 21per cent of the total. That's one percent more than the previous year, reflecting the increasingpopularity of that route.

Top officials from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, meanwhile, werescheduled to hold talks in Brussels onWednesday amid concern aboutnew border control measures aimed at stopping migrants enteringnorthern Europe,EU officials said Tuesday.

Sweden introduced ID checks on all people entering from Denmark,and Denmark tightened border controls on its border with Germany onMonday for at least 10 days, citing concerns about public securitybecause of migrantmovements and border measures taken by other EUmember states.

Danish officials said 18 people without proper ID were refusedentry from Germany in the first 12 hours of the increasedbordercrossing checks. Three people were also arrested, suspected of humansmuggling.

In Turkey, Namik Kemal Nazli, the local administrator forAyvalik, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the victims of thefirst incident are believed to be from Iraq, Algeria and Syria.There was no information on the nationalities of thosedrowned inthe second incident.

A body with a lifejacket was pulled from the sea onto the beachat Ayvalik by a fisherman and a military police official,Dogan newsagency video footage showed. Other bodies, also in lifejackets, wereseen lying nearby.