At least 45 people, including 17 children, have died after their boats sank near two Greek islands as the number of deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean make this the deadliest January on record.

The deaths occurred off two small islands in the eastern Aegean. The highest death toll came when a wooden sailboat sank off Kalolymnos. The coastguard recovered 34 bodies and rescued 26 people. The number of those missing is not known, although between 70 and 100 people were thought to be on board.

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At the same time, a wooden boat carrying 49 people sank after crashing into a rocky area off Farmakonisi, to the north of Kalolymnos. Forty people scrambled to shore, one girl was rescued, but six children and two women died.

Later, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the Turkish coast guard had rescued six survivors from the area of the two accidents and found another three bodies.

Despite winter weather, refugees – many from Syria – are still making the perilous journey from Turkey in flimsy boats every day. According to the International Organisation for Migration, the deaths in the Mediterranean in the past 24 hours bring the total number of fatalities recorded to at least 113, more than in January 2014 and January 2015 combined, when 94 deaths were recorded – 12 in January 2014 and 82 last year.



The IOM said the latest fatalities make this January the deadliest on record, with more than a week of the month left. The numbers arriving in Italy and Greece by sea so far exceed those in the comparable period last year.

“With nearly 37,000 migrants and refugees now having arrived in Italy and Greece by sea in 2016, that figure is roughly 10 times 2015’s total on this date. For Greece and the western Balkans, the increase is well over 20 times 2015’s total on this date,” the IOM said.

The 95 deaths recorded in the waters between Turkey and Greece bring to 900 the number of men, women and children who have died on the eastern Mediterranean route since the beginning of 2015, according to the IOM. Greece is the main gateway to the European Union for people fleeing war and poverty. More than 800,000 entered Greece last year, mostly using rickety boats to reach Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast.



On the central route linking north Africa to Sicily, the IOM reports that 18 men and women have been reported missing or drowned in 2016 – bringing the total since January 2015 to 2,910. While deaths in the waters between Turkey and Greece are almost a daily occurrence, there have been just two known shipwrecks between Libya and Italy so far this year.

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The refugee crisis has left governments scrambling for solutions. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said the US will seek a 30% increase in UN humanitarian funding this year at a summit to be hosted by Barack Obama.



The US State Department said it would seek an increase in funding from $10bn (£7bn) in 2015 to $13bn this year at the summit, to be held on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in September. In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kerry said the summit would also seek to increase the number of regular humanitarian donor countries by 10 and to at least double the number of refugees who are resettled or allowed other safe and legal channels of admission.

With the EU struggling to cope with the numbers of refugees, the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said in an interview that Europe cannot take in all those fleeing wars in Iraq and Syria without putting the concept of Europe itself in grave danger. Speaking to the BBC in the Swiss resort, Valls said Europe needed to take urgent action to control its external borders, “otherwise our societies will be totally destabilised”.

Asked about border controls inside Europe, which many fear put the passport-free Schengen zone at risk, Valls said the concept of Europe was in jeopardy. “If Europe is not capable of protecting its own borders, it’s the very idea of Europe that will be questioned,” he said.