Burcu Arik
March 19, 2016•Update: March 22, 2016
IZMIR
A four-month-old baby girl drowned off the southwestern coast of Turkey when a vessel carrying refugees sank early Saturday.
According to the Turkish Coast Guard, 21 refugees were rescued, but the infant was found dead.
The refugee boat reportedly was en route to the Greek island of Chios when it sank off the coast of the Cesme district.
Cesme is just 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the island of Chios, providing a tempting target for refugees – mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war.
Of the more than 1 million refugees who arrived in the EU last year, more than 850,000 arrived by sea in Greece from Turkey, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Over the course of the year, 805 died in the Aegean.
In the first two weeks of 2016, more than 23,000 arrived by sea in Greece and 50 have died, the IOM said.
