TURKEY:At least 53 people drowned when a boat carrying illegal migrants sank off Turkey's Aegean coast, in the biggest single accident to occur on this increasingly important route for migration to the European Union.
Overloaded, the 15-metre fishing boat appears to have capsized on Sunday night in heavy seas off the coast of Seferihisar, 20 miles northwest of the popular resort town of Kusadasi.
Battling two-metre waves and clinging to tyres, six survivors were saved after a hotel employee heard shouts early yesterday, saw them struggling in the water and called the coast guard.
The southwest wind has since blown only bodies to shore, and with the Turkish coast guard quoting survivors as saying there were up to 85 people on the boat, the authorities fear the death toll will continue to rise.
"We are holding out hope of finding survivors, but time - and the weather - is against us", said Orhan Sefik Guldibi, the top administrative official in Seferihisar.
"Because of the strong wind, we expect bodies to be closer to the coast than where the boat sank, but rescue teams are searching out to sea too."
Mr Guldibi said the victims were mainly Somali, Iraqi and Palestinian.
Turkish television footage showed a coast guard official pulling a body from the sea on to a beach. A fishing boat brought a dozen more bodies, which were placed in black body bags and lined along a dock.
Mr Guldibi said he did not know where the boat was headed when it sank.
Seferihisar is just 20 miles east of the Greek island of Chios, only two miles from Turkey at its closest point.
The narrows are popular among people smugglers, who charge migrants from Asia and Africa in search of jobs and a better life about €1,000 for the trip.
Many make the short crossing in the flimsiest of boats and accidents are common. In October, 32 people died crossing from Turkey to Greece, according to the Italian monitoring group Fortress Europe.
That is a small percentage of the 1,343 migrants Fortress Europe says drowned in the Mediterranean in the first 10 months of this year, on their way towards Europe.
Analysts say the popularity of the Turkish-Greek route is increasing.
"Counting clandestines is an impossible task", says Taner Kilic, Amnesty International representative in the city of Izmir, just up the coast from Seferihisar, "but there seems a very clear rise in the number of deaths occurring in this area."
Under pressure from the EU, which it wants to join, Turkey has pledged to tighten up border controls and modernise technical equipment in its combat against people-smuggling.
So far this year, the Turkish coast guard has detained 4,900 people attempting to travel to Greece by water, more than twice last year's figure.
However, with thousands waiting inside Turkey for an opportunity to make the trip, its efforts look likely to be vain.
Just yesterday, Greek coast guards detained 113 Afghans who had made it to a tiny rocky islet off the Greek island of Lesbos, north of Izmir.
Seventy-seven more migrants were arrested last night on the Turkish side of the heavily-mined Turkish-Greek land border.