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Greece Rescues 59 Migrants Near Kos, While Turkey Intercepts Boat to Lesvos

A dinghy full of refugees and migrants is towed by a Turkish Coast Guard fast rigid-hulled inflatable boat (not seen) on the Turkish territorial waters of the North Aegean Sea, following a failed attempt of crossing to the Greek island of Chios, off the shores of Izmir, Turkey, February 28, 2016. Picture taken February 28, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
According to the AP, Greece’s Coast Guard has rescued 59 migrants attempting to cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to enter Greece in an inflatable plastic dinghy in rough seas.
The migrants were apparently trying to reach the Greek island of Kos early Wednesday morning.
Also on Wednesday morning, the AA says that according to police reports, the Turkish Coast Guard caught 17 migrants attempting to cross from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesvos on a small boat.
Reports detailed descriptions of the migrants which included children and adults from Afghanistan, Mali, Iran and Congo. They were processed and transported to a Migrants Return Center in the Ayvacik district.
These new arrivals come at a time when Turkey-EU relations are increasingly becoming strained stemming from the failed military coup attempt that took place in Turkey back in July. Ever since the coup attempt the Turkish government has remained in an unstable and unpredictable state.
There is a rising fear that the EU-Turkey migrant deal that was reached in March stating that migrants who are not granted asylum in Greece can face returning to Turkey, might collapse at any given moment. This would mean that Greece would once again see an influx of migrant arrivals to the eastern Greece islands, since they are located very close off the coast of Turkey and are the closest EU entry point for migrants fleeing their war-torn countries.
This month Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told German newspaper Bild that if the EU wants the migrant deal to remain then Turks must be granted visa-free travel throughout the EU by October saying that “It can’t be that we implement everything that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in return.”
To date there are over 57,000 migrants stranded in Greece living in migrant reception centers as FYROM stopped all entry of migrants into the country from the Greece-FYROM border earlier this spring.
If the EU-Turkey migrant deal falters then the numbers of migrants attempting to reach the Greek shores could increase by the hundreds of thousands, according to Reuters.

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