Pushback

A life raft carrying migrants crashed into rocks off Turkey's Aegean coastal town of Cesme on Tuesday, killing seven people on board, the Turkish coast guard said.

One person was rescued from the sea by a fishing boat which then alerted the coast guard. Eighteen others, including children, were rescued from the small island of Karaada near Cesme.

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.

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Greece to pay 8,000 euros to an unaccompanied child refugee, who in 2018 was left without accommodation for six months.

The court ruled, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment.

More than 2,100 people, including children, women and people with disabilities, are alleged to have been victims of informal pushbacks during 2022, according to figures derived from the annual report of the Recording Mechanism that monitors, records and reports incidents of informal forced returns for the National Human Rights Commission.

A leading international medical charity alleged Thursday that testimony from dozens of migrants over the past two years points to a "recurring practice" of secret, illegal and often brutal deportations back to Turkey from two eastern Greek islands.

Greece's new minister for migration said Monday he would consider it "unthinkable" for the European Union to pull out its border protection force from the country, and promised to address a growing list of international grievances over dealing with migrants.

The Turkish Coast Guard has rescued 84 irregular migrants pushed back by Greek authorities off the northwestern province of Çanakkale.

The teams initiated an operation after receiving information that a group of irregular migrants was drifting off Çanakkale's Ayvacık district.

The new migration minister promised Tuesday to continue a "strict but fair" policy toward migration and attempts at illegal entry into the country, following conservative New Democracy's sweeping re-election victory.

"We are humanitarians but not naïve," the new minister, Dimitris Keridis, told reporters hours after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' new government was sworn in.

The Turkish Coast Guard has rescued 14 irregular migrants pushed back by Greek authorities off the northwestern province of Çanakkale.

The teams took action upon receiving information that a group of irregular migrants was drifting off Çanakkale's Ayvacık district.

Migrants stand outside a tent at Vucjak refugee camp outside Bihac, northwest Bosnia, 4 December 2019.  Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR