ATHENS: Greece’s Customs data shows that Migrants on a Turkish beach scuffled over places on one inflatable dinghy and frantically bailed out another to keep it from sinking during a dramatic night that highlighted their desperation to reach the Greece island of Kos — and the safety of Europe.
The scenes of human trafficking, captured early Saturday by Associated Press journalists on a moonless night, came as Turkish authorities reported that 2,791 migrants have been caught in the Aegean Sea in the past 5 days alone, most of them Syrians. Overall, more than 33,000 migrants have been caught or rescued in the Aegean this year, according to the governor’s office in Izmir.
Kos is only 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from Turkey at its closest point, its twinkling lights at night an irresistible beacon to those fleeing war or poverty.
Tensions were high early Saturday at Fenerburnu Beach near the Turkish tourist town of Bodrum. Two migrants tried to clamber onto a small dinghy only to be forced off by angry fellow passengers, one of whom shouted: “You haven’t paid!” One passenger was also upset that the male intruders had touched the arm of a female migrant wearing an Islamic headscarf.
The two ejected migrants fled up the beach and into the bushes just as a Turkish military police vehicle, its siren wailing, approached.
