Greece’s coast guard on Wednesday released another purportedly showing a vessel loaded with would-be migrants headed for an eastern Aegean island, but again accompanied by Turkish patrols boats towards Greek territorial waters.
According to the Greek side, the incident took place on Wednesday morning northeast of Lesvos (Mytilene), the island which has fared the worst in the migrant/refugee crisis that erupted in 2015, when organized smuggling rings in western Turkey landed hundreds of thousands of third country nationals on a handful of Greek isles.
The coast guard said repeated calls and notification by its headquarters to its Turkish counterpart and to indiual patrol boats were initially ignored. Only in the early afternoon did a Turkish patrol boat stop the craft, pick up its passengers and return them to Turkish territory, from where they disembarked.
No information was given on the number of would-be migrants on the vessel or their country of origin and demographics.
