A four-year-old Syrian girl's body has washed up on a beach in western Turkey, state media says, just weeks after images of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi shook the world.
The yet-to-be identified girl was found lifeless on a beach in the Aegean town of Cesme in Izmir province after a boat carrying 15 Syrians to the Greek island of Chios sank.
It said the Turkish coast guard rescued the remaining 14 Syrians, including eight children, from the inflatable boat. The girl appeared to be the only casualty.
Harrowing pictures of three-year-old Syrian asylum seeker Aylan, whose body was found washed up on a Turkish beach after the boat carrying his family to the Greek island of Kos sank, caused an outpouring of emotion around the world.
The response pressured European leaders to step up their response to the migrant crisis.
But two weeks later EU members are still at odds over how to accommodate the tens of thousands of new arrivals.
Turkish deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Friday the Turkish coast guard had rescued over 53,000 asylum seekers from stricken boats since the beginning of the year.
He said around 274 asylum seekers had lost their lives in Turkish waters this year seeking to leave the country by sea for Greece.
In another recent tragedy, 22 people who had left Turkey drowned on Tuesday when their wooden boat sank off Kos.
Asylum seekers have in recent days turned to Turkey's land borders with Greece and Bulgaria to avoid the sea voyage that has cost over 2,600 people their lives in the Mediterranean this year.
Several hundred asylum seekers spent a third day camped in and around the Turkish border city of Edirne, which lies 10 kilometres from the Greek border and is being promoted on social media as a safer route out of Turkey than sea journey in overcrowded dinghies.
Under an "open-door" policy championed by president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has taken in 2.2 million Syrian asylum seekers since the conflict in Syria erupted in 2011.
Mr Kurtulmus said Turkey has so far spent almost $11 billion (6 billion euros) to provide for Syrian refugees.
International Organisation of Immigration says a record 473,887 asylum seekers crossed into Europe
A record 473,887 asylum seekers have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, the International Organisation for Migration said on Friday, including at least 182,000 Syrians — almost 40 per cent of the total.
The total represents an increase of almost 9,000 from the total the Geneva-based agency gave on Tuesday. But the rate of increase has slowed.
On Tuesday, the IOM said the number of crossings had jumped by more than 32,000 since the previous Friday.
The EU's Eurostat statistics agency said the EU received 213,000 asylum applications from April to June this year, a jump of 85 per cent from the same period in 2014, with over one third coming from Syria or Afghanistan.
It said Germany had the highest number of new applicants, with more than a third of the total for the EU, while Hungary was the country that received the most asylum applications relative to its population size.
Applications from Kosovo, regarded as a "safe" country by most of the EU, dropped sharply in the period, from the top berth with 50,000 requests in the first quarter to just over 10,000 one quarter later.
Across the EU almost 600,000 applications were pending at the end of June, Eurostat said, with 52 per cent of those being processed in Germany.
The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant 'hotspot'. We have hearts, but we also have head.Croatia's prime minister, Zoran Milanovi
Croatia said it cannot and would not accept the burden of thousands of asylum seekers any longer, nor register or accommodate them.
Faced with an influx of more than 13,000 migrants in just over two days, prime minister Zoran Milanovic said on Friday he had called a session of Croatia's National Security Council and that it was time to deal with the problem in a different way
"We cannot register and accommodate these people any longer," he told a news conference.
"They will get food, water and medical help, and then they can move on. The European Union must know that Croatia will not become a migrant 'hotspot'. We have hearts, but we also have heads."
In response, Slovenia accused Croatia on of breaking the rules of the EU and the Schengen zone of border-free travel.
Interior ministry state secretary Bostjan Sefic said Slovenia expected around 1,000 asylum seekers to cross from Croatia in the next 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Dutch prosecutors said on Friday they had arrested two Syrians suspected of operating a large people-smuggling ring that brought hundreds of Syrian refugees into Europe.
Following a year-long investigation, Dutch authorities arrested a 35-year-old Syrian man living in the southern city of Eindhoven as well as his 26-year-old cousin.
Europol, Europe's police agency, is tracking as many as 30,000 suspected people smugglers who are taking advantage of large flows into the continent of asylum seekers escaping conflict in the Middle East and Africa.
Vatican takes in first Syrian refugee family
Responding to a call from Pope Francis for every Church parish to house refugees, the Vatican City said on Friday it had taken in a family that had fled the war in Syria.
The family — a father, mother and their two children — came from Damascus and are Melkite Greek Catholics, a Christian church with close ties to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Vatican said in a statement the family, which was not named, arrived in Italy on September 6, the day Pope Francis made his appeal for European parishes to open their doors to refugees. The four Syrians have since asked for asylum.
Journey in search of a better life
In a special report, ABC correspondents Mary Gearin, Barbara Miller and Sophie McNeill follow some asylum seekers on their long path through Europe.
"According to the law, for the first six months following the request for asylum those seeking international protection cannot work," the Vatican said.
"During this time, they will be helped and accompanied by the Parish of Santa Anna."
The Vatican City, a micro state which sits in the heart of Rome, contains two parishes — Santa Anna and St. Peter's Basilica.
The Vatican said it could not yet provide any information about a second family that is expected to be housed by the St Peter's administration.
Some parishioners have been openly hostile to the idea of welcoming in Muslims.
Monks in a village in Slovakia had to withdraw an offer to house Christian Syrian refugees after locals baulked at the idea.
The vast majority of Syrians are Muslims, but its small Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, making up an estimated 10 per cent of the population before the outbreak of the Syrian unrest in 2011.
According to its website, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church had some 150,000 members in Damascus in 2010. It is not clear how many have stayed in the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment