The death toll from a shipwreck off the island of Lesbos rose to 18 on Thursday (October 6), and coast guards were still searching for missing from that wreck and another off the island of Kythira in the last 24 hours.
Coast guard officials rescued 25 from the boat that sank off Lesbos, which they estimate was carrying about 40 people.
Late on Wednesday the coast guard rescued 80 migrants from another shipwreck near the island of Kythira - among them 18 minors - whose boat sank in stormy waters.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, speaking from Prague as he arrived for the inaugural summit of the European Political Community, urged Europe to work together to prevent such incidents.
"I would like to express my deepest sorrow for the tragic loss of life that occurred this morning, late last night in the Aegean into a separate shipwrecks, despite the heroic efforts of the Greek Coast Guard. I think this is a time to really cooperate much more substantially in order to avoid these types of incidents occurring in the future and to completely eradicate the smugglers who prey upon innocent people, desperate people who try to reach the European continent in vessels which are clearly not seaworthy." said Mitsotakis.
Greece was on the front line of a European migration crisis in 2015 and 2016, when around a million refugees fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in the country, mainly via Turkey.
The number of arrivals has fallen since then. But Greek authorities said they had recently seen an increase in attempted entries through the country's islands and Turkish land border.
On Thursday, Shipping Minister Ioannis Plakiotakis said Turkey was not preventing human traffickers from exploiting migrants and urged it to respect a 2016 deal with the European Union to keep refugees and migrants away from Europe.
"As long as the Turkish coast guard does not prevent their actions, traffickers will pile unfortunate people, without safety measures, into boats that cannot withstand the weather conditions," he said.
Turkey says it has ramped up measures to prevent people smuggling. Greece has faced repeated accusations from Ankara as well as from rights groups and the United Nations' Refugee Agency UNHCR of pushing back migrants and refugees and sinking their boats, something Athens denies.
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