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Athens – Nine people, four of them children, drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Turkey sank off the Greek island of Kos, the coastguard said on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n They were the latest of nearly 3 500 deaths at sea this year among people making desperate bids to flee war and poverty and to reach Europe, according to UN figures.<\/p>\n The coastguard said four women were among the latest victims and that the search was still underway late on Tuesday for two boys whose family said they were from Iraq.<\/p>\n Seven passengers on the boat were rescued. An earlier provisional toll had put the number of deaths at eight.<\/p>\n The boat, which came from nearby Turkey and capsized overnight, was spotted by the crew of a Finnish ship participating in operations by Frontex, the EU’s border security agency.<\/p>\n A 3-year-old child died on Saturday off Greece’s Chios island further north when the motor of the vessel he was travelling in exploded.<\/p>\n More than 800 000 migrants, mostly fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have crossed the Mediterranean this year to reach Europe.<\/p>\n The vast majority have reached Greek shores, from where they travel up to the Balkans and on towards countries like Germany and Sweden where they apply for asylum.<\/p>\n Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was set to visit Turkey, starting on Tuesday, to urge authorities to impose stricter controls on the trafficking of migrants into Europe.<\/p>\n Athens fears coming under new EU pressure over the migrant crisis after the discovery at the scene of one of Friday’s Paris attacks of a Syrian passport registered in the Greek island of Leros on October 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 4 children die as migrant boat capzises off Greece Athens – Nine people, four of them children, drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Turkey sank off the Greek island of Kos, the coastguard said on Tuesday. They were the latest of nearly 3 500 deaths at sea this year among people making desperate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"\n