2 children among 4 killed in Aegean boat sinking

2 children among 4 killed in Aegean boat sinking

Athens - The bodies of four migrants - including two children - were pulled from the Aegean Sea on Wednesday after their boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos, port police said.

Coastguard rescuers saved six other migrants, while another person is still missing from the group of 11 that set off for Greece from the Turkish coast.

The dead included "a four-year-old girl and boy of an unknown age, as well as a man and woman," a police official told AFP.

Though some migrants continue to arrive by sea, a controversial deal between the European Union and Turkey that came into force in March has largely halted the influx of people fleeing war and poverty, mainly from the Middle East and Africa.

Lesbos and other eastern Aegean islands last year were the gateway into Europe for a migration wave unseen since World War II.

Some 2,900 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, compared with about 1,900 for the same period in 2015, according to International Organization for Migration figures.

This website is best viewed using the latest versions of web browsers.