ANKARA - At least 17 members of an Iraqi family were drowned and four people were missing as two boats smuggling illegal Iraqi refugees from Turkey to a Greek island sank overnight in the Aegean Sea, local officials said yesterday.
The two Turkish boats sank after leaving the coast near Kusadasi port, 300 km south west of Istanbul, for the Greek island of Samos late on Saturday night, a coastguard official in Kusadasi said.
Coastguard officials recovered the bodies of 17 Iraqis from the Ahmad family, including four women and five children, he said, adding four people were missing following the worst sea accident in the region in decades. At least two Turkish seamen were believed to be among the missing. One Iraqi man who managed to swim to shore told Turkish authorities that the smaller boat began to sink off Turkey's Dilek peninsula shortly after departure. Mr Nasraddin Ahmad (18) said seven people on board were transferred to the bigger boat, which then overturned and sank.