The migrants are believed to have reached the island on a boat amid high winds in the Aegean Sea, a coastguard official said.
According to the migrants’ accounts, there were about 36 people on board and some had jumped into the sea, she added. Coastguards and police searched for more people onshore, the coastguard said.
Greece was at the frontline of a migrant crisis in 2015 where more than 1 million people, mostly Syrian refugees, crossed from Turkey to the European country by sea.
Migrant flows dropped significantly before rising again this year.\
On December 18, 2023 ,At least 61 migrants were missing and presumed dead after their boat sank off Libya’s coast, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Saturday, in the latest such tragedy off North Africa.
The migrants are believed to have died because of high waves which swamped their vessel after it left from Zuwara, on Libya’s northwest coast, the IOM’s Libya office said in a statement to AFP.
Citing survivors, it said there were approximately 86 migrants aboard — including women and children — from Nigeria, The Gambia and other African countries.
Twenty-five people were rescued and transferred to a Libyan detention centre, said the IOM.
It said the survivors were all in good condition and had received medical support from IOM staff.
Libya and Tunisia are principal departure points for migrants risking dangerous sea voyages in hopes of reaching Europe, via Italy.
More than 153,000 migrants arrived in Italy this year from Tunisia and Libya, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni won elections last year after vowing to stop illegal migration.
Meloni’s hard-right government has so far taken numerous measures to restrict the activities of charity ships that save people attempting the perilous crossing from North Africa.
Her approach to tackling illegal migration won praise from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a visit to Rome on Saturday.
The two leaders vowed to stop migrant boat landings on their countries’ shores and to step up efforts to combat people smugglers.
The United Nations has described the central Mediterranean migration route as the world’s deadliest, claiming hundreds of lives each year.
Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesperson, wrote on social media platform X on Saturday that more than 2,250 people died this year on the central Mediterranean migrant route, a “dramatic figure which demonstrates that unfortunately not enough is being done to save lives at sea”.
The Adriana, a fishing boat loaded with 750 people en route from Libya to Italy, went down in international waters off southwest Greece on June 14. According to survivors, the ship was carrying mainly Syrians, Pakistanis and Egyptians. Only 104 survived and 82 bodies were recovered.
Nearly 30,000 migrants crossed the Channel to Britain from mainland Europe in small boats in 2023, an annual drop of more than a third, government figures released Monday showed.
However, the unauthorised arrivals of 29,437 people on the southeast English coast remains the second largest yearly tally since officials began publishing the numbers in 2018.
The perilous journeys across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes have become a huge political problem for the Conservative government, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledging last year to “stop the boats”.
One of five key promises he made for 2023, the persistently high number of arrivals could haunt the Tory leader as he bids to win a general election due this year.
Sunak said last month there was no “firm date” for meeting his pledge.
The beleaguered leader will likely point to a 36 percent reduction in small-boat arrivals last year, after a record 45,000 migrants made the journey in 2022
His ministers have claimed Britain’s £480 million ($610 million) agreement with France to increase efforts to stop the migrants is starting to pay off, alongside fast-track return deals struck with countries such as Albania.
But the main Labour opposition – which has enjoyed double-digit poll leads for the duration of Sunak’s nearly 15 months in power – says he has failed to keep his promise and his immigration policy is in chaos.
The ruling Conservatives had hoped to deter the crossings by preventing all migrants arriving without prior authorisation from applying for asylum and sending some to Rwanda.
But the policy remains stalled after the UK Supreme Court ruled that deporting them to the east African country is illegal under international law.
The cross-Channel journeys on small inflatable vessels, which are often overloaded and unseaworthy, has repeatedly proved deadly.
In one of the latest tragedies, at least six men died and dozens more required rescuing in August after a small vessel bound for the southeast English coast from France sank.
In November 2021, at least 27 people drowned when their dinghy capsized.