Four babies among 13 migrants who drowned

One boat overturned off the Greek island of Samos - just 20 metres from the shore. Ten bodies, including six children - four of them babies - were found in the vessel's cabin while one was discovered washed up on the island.

Two others were still missing with coastguards saying 15 were plucked from the water. 

A boat from the European border agency Frontex also recovered two bodies near the island of Farmakonnisi, near Samos, after what is believed to be a separate capsizing.

Frontex managed to rescued three others, who said their boat was carrying 15 people when it sank in Turkish waters.

Greek authorities and the Turkish coastguard 'continue to search the zone to find the migrants who disappeared in the sinking, which probably took place off the Turkish coast'. 

The new sinkings add to a string of migrant boat tragedies since Monday off the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kalymnos and Rhodes in which more than 60 people have drowned, at least 28 of them children.

Photographs have been emerging of lifeless bodies washing up on Lesbos.

On Friday alone, 22 people, including 17 children, lost their lives trying to cross to the eastern Aegean islands from Turkey, to which more than two million Syrian refugees have fled. 

That followed another tragic day on Wednesday when 24 migrants - 11 of them children - died in five shipwrecks off Lesbos, Samos and Agathonisi. 

Since the beginning of the year, 580,125 migrants have landed on Greece’s shores, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, with a total of 723,221 crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Friday that the drownings were a 'humanitarian tragedy' and a 'shame' for Europe.

He is to travel to Lesbos this week with the president of the European parliament, Martin Schultz, his office said.

(dailymail.co.uk)