European migrant crisis

Security forces and Coast Guard units rescued approximately 24,000 migrants in Turkish seas last year, while 20 lost their lives on perilous routes, the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry has announced.

Greek authorities found 84 migrants arriving by sea and arrested four individuals, accusing them of being the traffickers that transported them, the coast guard said Sunday.

Both incidents occurred early Saturday, it said.

Greece rescued 30 migrants and recovered the bodies of two people, a woman and a man, close to a rocky shore on the island of Lesvos on Wednesday, the coastguard said.

Greece rescued 18 migrants and recovered the bodies of two people, a woman and a man, close to a rocky shore on the island of Lesvos on Wednesday, the coastguard said.

Police detected a total of 24 migrants who entered Greece illegally from the Turkish border in two separate incidents between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

A non-national migrant smuggler was arrested at the Kipoi border crossing after they found 18 migrants in a trailer attached to the truck he was driving.

Authorities in the southern Peloponnesian city of Kalamata have rescued 81 people stranded on a ship south of the mainland, on a route frequently used to take migrants illegally to Italy, local officials have said.

Municipal officials said the city had provided a temporary shelter for the people rescued, who identified themselves as coming from Egypt, Pakistan and Syria.

The European Union agreed on Wednesday on new rules to handle irregular arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants, a deal hailed as a breakthrough after almost a decade of bitter feuds on the issue.

The European Union reached agreement early on Wednesday on new rules designed to share out the cost and work of hosting migrants more evenly and to limit the numbers of people coming in.

As record numbers of Syrian refugees reach the shores of Cyprus, the Nicosia government wants the European Union to consider declaring parts of their war-torn homeland safe to repatriate them to, the Cypriot interior minister said.

"Starting a discussion to re-evaluate the issue of Syria is crucial for us," Minister Constantinos Ioannou told Reuters in an interview.

Two leading international human rights groups on Thursday accused Greek authorities of failing to properly investigate the circumstances around a migrant boat sinking six months ago that killed hundreds.