Lesbos

Three Dutch women created the website www.bagtothefuture.eu hoping to gather a bag with toys to be offered to the child refugees on Lesbos as a welcome gift. They thought they would take them along on their trip. Instead, they were inundated by 14,000 bags as dozens of schools from around the Netherlands contributed.

By Melissa Fleming

He stood on the mud, crows cawing overhead, pointing at unmarked graves. "Here's a mother with her baby. And here's another young woman. Over there, that's a 60-year-old man." 

Buried beneath low mounds of earth, facing Mecca, lay Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees who drowned this summer in the Aegean Sea trying to reach Europe in flimsy inflatable boats. 

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras arrived at the airport of Mytilene, Lesvos island shortly before 14:00 in order to have a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, the mayor of Lesbos, Spyros Galinos, and other bodies focusing on refugees crisis.

According to LesvosPost.gr Mr. Tsipras arrived at the island accompanied by strong police presence.

Eric Kempson, his wife Philippa and their daughter Elleni live on the Greek island of Lesbos. For months they have struggled to give the most basic of humanitarian assistance to thousands of desperate people arriving in boats from Turkey. This is their story.

Modest funeral plots multiply at the back of an old cemetery at Lesbos (Mytilene). Dirt mounds at the back are a foil for the imposing, marble tombs that dot Saint Panteleimon’s grounds as the graves of refugees that died reaching the island continue to multiply.

Thousands of life jackets piled up on a beach near the town Molyvos in the Greek island of Lesbos formed a small hill. The images taken by AFP photographer Aris Messinis indicate the proportions of the refugee crisis that has now reached other northern European countries, and led to Europe scrambling to find solutions while revealing divisions within EU member-states.

In the “strange but true” category, media reports from the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos (Lesbos) have nearly three-fourths of the Turkish tourists that booked holidays on the island for a coming Muslim holiday cancelling due to the … migrant crisis.

Greece’s state-run news agency quotes a noted travel agent on the island, who specializes in Turkish tourists, as stating that:

At least 13 migrants have drowned off the coast of Turkey, sailing en route to Greece, Turkish authorities say.

Of the 46 people on board, 20 have been rescued and 13 are still missing. Four of the victims are reportedly children.

A dinghy they were using smashed into a Ferry near the port city of Çanakkale.

At least 13 migrants died off the coast of Turkey on Sept.20 after the inflatable dinghy carrying them to Greece collided with a ferry, Turkish media reported.