At least 14 dead as migrant boat sinks off Turkey

Istanbul: At least 14 migrants died when their inflatable dinghy capsized in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish resort of Bodrum, the governor’s office said Friday, raising an earlier toll of seven dead.

“The lifeless bodies of 14 irregular migrants were recovered,” the office of the Mugla governorate said on X, saying the coastguard was alerted to the emergency in the early hours of Friday morning.

It said they had found two survivors, one of whom said the boat had been “carrying 18 people” when it started letting on water, sinking just 10 minutes later. One survivor managed to swim to Celebi Island.

One of the survivors was an Afghan national, the governor’s office said without saying where the others were from.

It said four coastguard boats backed by a helicopter and a specialist diving team were looking for the two remaining migrants who were unaccounted for, it said.

Migrant boats are often lost on the short but perilous route between the Turkish coast and the nearby Greek islands of Samos, Rhodes and Lesbos that serve as entry points to the European Union.

Bodrum lies close to the Greek island of Kos.

According to the Missing Migrants Project run by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), nearly 1,400 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea this year.