Sixteen migrants and a people smuggler died when their inflatable dinghy capsized in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish resort of Bodrum, the coastguard said Friday, raising an earlier toll of 14 dead, Turkish Minute reported, citing Agence France-Presse.
“The dead bodies of 16 illegal migrants and that of a smuggler have been recovered,” the coastguard stated, adding two migrants had been rescued.
The local governor’s office had earlier given a death toll of 14 migrants, stating on X that a migrant had managed to alert the coastguard to the emergency.
One of the two survivors, an Afghan, told rescuers that the vessel had sunk barely 10 minutes after starting to take on water.
He had been forced to swim for six hours to Celebi Island, he added.
Authorities did not give the nationalities of the other migrants.
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 sits close to the Greek island of Kos.
According to the Missing Migrants Project run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), nearly 1,400 migrants have died trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea this year.
© Agence France-Presse
