Dozens drown in shipwrecks off Greece
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- Posted On 22-01-2016, 07:42PM
At least 42 migrants have drowned overnight in two separate shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea, officials say.
One boat went down off the coast of the small Greek islet of Kalolimnos, killing 34 people, including 11 children.
Another eight people died after a boat sank off the island of Farmakonisi.
More than a million migrants arrived in Europe illegally last year. More than 700 died in the Aegean crossing from Turkey to Greece.
At least another 100 have died in the Aegean this year.
German and Turkish leaders reaffirmed their commitment to tackling the migrant crisis at a joint cabinet meeting in Berlin on Friday.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, pledged to ensure Turkey would receive more than €3bn (£2.1bn; $3.3bn) promised by the EU in return for strengthening its border controls.
On Thursday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that Europe's migration crisis was putting the European Union at grave risk.
Mr Valls told the BBC that Europe could not take all the refugees fleeing wars in Iraq or Syria. If it did, he said, it could "destabilise our societies".
