Children among the dead after vessels sink in bad weather off Greek island, which is short of clothing and blankets for survivors

A British volunteer on Lesbos has described horrendous scenes after worsening weather caused boats to capsize in the Aegean Sea, killing at least 11 people, including several children.



Authorities on the Greek island said 38 people were believed to be missing at sea on Thursday after high winds battered the ageing wooden fishing boats that are increasingly used to make the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Tracey Myers, a volunteer based in the port town of Molyvos, said: “I’ve never seen a day like yesterday. I never ever want to see another day like yesterday in my life. These people are escaping war and can’t get a route to safety. There is the need for the shelter, but the real need is for them to have a safe way to apply for asylum.”

Eleven people drowned on Wednesday after a boat carrying hundreds of refugees capsized and several smaller boats were also swamped, triggering one of the biggest rescue missions in the Aegean Sea this year. The Greek coastguard said it had rescued 242 people.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A refugee family weeps after arriving on Lesbos, as the weather continued to deteriorate for those trying to cross from Turkey. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to the Guardian by telephone from a rescue centre, Myers said volunteers had been warned of a “hideous medical need” when the high winds caused a “constant stream of boats sinking in the sea” on Wednesday afternoon.

“We had one boat come and we had 10 half-drowned babies, and we had to lay them out on stretchers and try [to] resuscitate them. Then we had to move all those people on and the same thing happened again.

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“The harbour was just a scene of half-dead kids, with us trying to get the water out of them and trying to resuscitate them.”



Myers said about a third of the people rescued on Wednesday were children younger than five, mainly from Syria, with at least 25 suffering serious shock, hypothermia and other injuries.

She said: “Two of our volunteers tried to resuscitate a child that died in the harbour and they kept doing CPR because the dad was distraught and they just wanted to show the dad that they had done their absolute best. One of the volunteers did CPR on this kid for 25 minutes, but the kid was gone.

“Another of our volunteers came across a three or four-year-old boy and they tried to electroshock him and bring him back to life and resuscitate him, but he passed in his arms. The volunteers here are seeing a huge amount of trauma.”

Myers recently left her job at Leeds University to work full time for the charity Refugees Start on Lesbos.

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She said the island had run out of blankets, and that children, many still damp and barefoot after being rescued from sinking boats, were having to sleep on tattered bits of cardboard.

The Starfish Foundation, another charity with volunteers in Molyvos, has issued an appeal for sleeping bags, socks, underwear, raincoats, men’s trousers, tracksuit bottoms, clothes for children aged 10 to 14 and winter scarves, gloves and hats.

Greece is the main entry point for people from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach Europe. More than 500,000 have arrived so far this year.

Greece’s minister of shipping and island policy, Thodoris Dritsas, expressed sorrow over the deaths and called for more coherent EU policies to stop refugees risking their lives by paying people-smugglers to ferry them to Greece in unseaworthy craft.