Eleven refugees drown in a single day

The refugee crisis and the economy in the agenda of talks of German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank Walter Steinmeier w,ho visits Athens today.
“Greece must not connect its bailout program with the refugee crisis” Berlin warns.
Tomorrow, Foreign Affairs Minister of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto will also visit the country to discuss the refugee crisis and ways to tackle refugee flows in Europe.

One thousand refugees were rescued in Italy, inter-governmental problems observed in Germany due to the crisis while clashes occurred in Austria.

As the Associated Press reports, the Greek coast guard rescued 242 people off the eastern island of Lesbos after the wooden boat they were travelling in capsized, leaving at least three people dead.
The search for more survivors continues as it remains unclear how many people were on the boat when it sank on Wednesday.
Greece is the main entry point for people from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the EU. More than half a million have arrived so far this year.
The International Organisation for Migration said in a statement that some sources told it 200 people were onboard, while others said there were 300.
The accident raised the total death toll from five separate incidents in the eastern Aegean sea to 11. In a separate incident earlier on Wednesday, a 7-year-old boy died off Lesbos while a 12-month-old girl was in critical condition in hospital from the same boat accident.
Another three children and a man died off the coast of Samos, while one woman and two children drowned off the islet of Agathonisi.More than 500,000 refugees and migrants have entered Greece through its outlying islands since January, transiting on to central and northern Europe in what has become the biggest humanitarian crisis on the continent in decades, Reuters adds.
Inflows have increased recently as refugees are trying to beat the onset of winter, crossing the narrow sea passages between Turkey and Greece on overcrowded small boats.
“These praiseworthy attempts of the coastguard to save refugees at sea is at risk of now turning into a constant operation of locating and collecting drowned refugees,” Greek shipping minister Thodoris Dritsas said.
Lesbos, which lies less than 10 kilometres from the Turkish coast in the north Aegean Sea, has been a primary gateway for thousands of migrants entering the European Union’s outermost border.
At a summit last Sunday, EU leaders agreed to cooperate further in handling the crisis, and to provide United Nations-aided housing for 100,000 people, half of them in Greece.
Aid organisations say it barely addresses the problem of ensuring safe and legal routes for people to seek refuge.
“What we don’t need in the wake of this tragedy is another ‘extraordinary’ meeting that leads to a dead end. What would be truly out of the ordinary – but completely necessary – is real and concerted action,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe.