Boat capsizes near Turkey

27 migrants drown

Ankara will take refugees fleeing Syrian forces ‘when necessary’

ISTANBUL: Twenty-seven migrants, 11 of them children, drowned off Turkey’s Aegean coast as they tried to reach a Greek island, the Turkish coast guard said.

Four migrants were rescued and a search operation was underway for nine remaining passengers.

One migrant was rescued by a fisherman and three more were rescued by the coast guard, which said it had deployed boats and helicopters to search for more passengers.

The boat sank in the Aegean Sea near the Edremit area of the northwestern province Balikesir.

Separately, the private news agency Dogan said 11 migrants died and three were rescued when another boat sank further south, off the coast of Dikili in the province of Izmir.

More than 900,000 people fleeing Syria, Afghanistan and other war-torn or impoverished countries arrived in Greece from Turkey last year, often risking their lives in the short but perilous sea crossing in overloaded boats. Hundreds have died making the attempt.

Meanwhile, Turkey will admit the almost 30,000 people fleeing war-torn Syria who have amassed at the border "when necessary," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, adding Russia’s air assault should not be tolerated with the idea that Turkey will accept the refugees.

The latest developments in Syria are an attempt to pressure Turkey and Europe on the migration issue, Davutoglu said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Davutoglu also said that Turkey would inform Brussels next week on the initial projects it plans after receiving 3 billion euros in funds from the EU aimed at curbing record flows of migrants to Europe via Turkey, where 2.2 million Syrians are already sheltering.

Meantime, the Netherlands has stepped up the monitoring of traffic crossing its frontiers, a government minister said on Monday, as countries across Europe move to tighten border controls in response to an unprecedented migration crisis.

The move follows a decision last September to deploy mobile border guard units along roads and railways lines to intercept migrants and separate them from asylum seekers.

"Those measures helped, but we were still seeing a rising number of smugglers being arrested, and you are seeing more people coming from safe countries, who aren’t eligible for asylum," state secretary Klaas Dijkhoff told reporters.