Greece blasts inadequate EU response to refugee crisis as 21 more perish in Aegean

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blasted the inadequate response of EU partners on Friday, as 21 refugees and migrants, including at least nine children, perished in the Aegean Sea and an as yet undetermined number were still reported missing.

Tsipras, when addressing Greek parliament, called it one of the worst tragedies involving boats carrying refugees from Turkey to Greece to occur in Greek waters since the start of this year.

The Leftist Premier said he felt ashamed to be part of the European leadership, which he said was unprepared to address the major challenge and put an end to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

However, he welcomed the latest steps of EU partners to jointly tackle the issue and underlined that Athens did not support the policy of erecting walls and fences to keep refugees away.

As Tsipras was delivering a speech in the assembly, Greek Coast Guard officers were retrieving more dead bodies from two incidents off the islands of Kalymnos and Rhodes reported on late Thursday and early Friday.

Twenty-one people died after the sinking of two old wooden boats. In similar incidents reported on Wednesday and Thursday off Lesvos' coasts, 17 people died and more than 30 were missing, according to the Coast Guard.

This week, the Greek Coast Guard has rescued more than 1,000 people. According to the Greek shipping ministry, around 100,000 refugees have been rescued in Greek waters so far this year. More than 3,000 people have perished since the start of the year when crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, over half a million refugees and migrants have reached Greece since the start of 2015, according to figures from the UN High Commission for Refugees and the International Office for Migration. More than 300,000 people have passed through Lesvos island.

The overwhelming majority of migrants continue their journey to central and northern European countries.

Following a long string of meetings on the crisis lately, EU member states have promised to better coordinate their efforts to address the challenge and support countries which are at the frontline of the refugee flows, in particularly debt-laden Greece that has received the bulk of arrivals.

In recent weeks, Greece has been creating new so-called "hot spots" to receive refugees with EU's financial and technical support, but officials and experts have stressed that much more needs to be done. They have urged for more efforts to achieve a political resolution of the Syrian war and in the meantime strengthened cooperation with Turkey to deal with smuggling networks on Turkish shores.

Survivors of Thursday's and Friday's latest tragedies told Greek local media that they had been forced to get on the old wooden boats at gunpoint by Turkish traffickers. This after they complained that they had paid between 1,000 and 2,000 euros each (1,104 and 2,209 U.S. dollars) for the promise of strong new vessels to carry them safely to Greece. Endit