ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - At least seven people, including two children, lost their lives on Thursday when a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea, according to the Greek coast guard.

The boat had left Turkey for Greece’s Lesbos before capsizing a short distance from the Turkish coast, with total of 23 people being rescued from the inflatable boat and taken to hospital, according to Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency.

It has remained unclear as to what caused the capsizing, how many migrants were in the boat, or what their nationalities were.

Greece is the first stop for many migrants who aim to reach the European Union.

In 2024 alone, 54,000 people reached Greece through the Greece-Turkey waterways, a 25-percent rise in the number of migrants compared with the previous year, according to the Refugee Support Aegean (RSA), adding that 170 migrants died in these waters during the same year.

Thousands of migrants illegally try to cross the deadly Aegean Sea every year in search of a better life in Europe, 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.

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.

In late December, at least 65 migrants who sought help in the Aegean Sea were pushed back by the Greek coast guard into Turkish territorial waters.

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