ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - At least 65 migrants who sought help in the Aegean Sea, were pushed back by the Greek Coast Guard into Turkish territorial waters, a Kurdish activist based in Greece said. 

“The migrants numbered 65 persons including 25 children,” Ranj Pzhdary, an Athens-based Kurdish migrants activist, told The New Region. “The Greek coast guards forcefully pushed back the migrants without taking into account their personal, and humanitarian conditions.” 

All the deported migrants were Kurdish nationals, Pzhdary said. 

Thousands of migrants illegally try to cross the deadly Aegean Sea every year in search of a better life in Europe and the United Kingdom, with a large number of them coming from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Kurdish areas of Syria, Iran, and Turkey.

According to data from Lutka or the Summit Foundation for Refugees and the Displaced Affairs, around 750,000 Iraqis have migrated out of the country since 2015, a year after ISIS swept across large parts of the country.

In a separate incident, Greek media reported that at least eight migrants drowned off the island of Rhodes after the country’s coastguard pursued a speedboat they were on in the Aegean Sea. The boat had allegedly attempted to flee a Greek patrol.

Greece has repeatedly been accused by migrants and humanitarian organizations of harshly approaching arriving migrant boats, pushing many of them back to the Turkish waters. 

Pushing back migrants who enter the European Union territorial waters is illegal, according to the bloc's regulations and international laws. 

In May 2023, the European Union accused Greece of human rights abuses at the EU-funded camps on the Greek islands, including allegations of sexual harassment and violence against children.

Athens says it has seen a 25-percent rise in the number of migrants in 2024, compared with the previous year.