Athens, Sep 23 (AP) At least four migrants died in the eastern Aegean Sea on Monday when a small boat bringing them from nearby Turkey sank in wind-tossed waters just off the island of Samos, Greek authorities said.

The coast guard said five other people were rescued after the accident, but it was unclear how many had originally been on the boat and whether any more were missing.

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Greek state-run ERT television and an international medical charity said the boat was thought to have been carrying at least 30 passengers.

The coast guard said a number of migrants were later located on Samos, but it could not be immediately established whether they were survivors from the shipwreck or had arrived separately in another boat.

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The bodies of four women were found during a large search and rescue operation involving three coast guard patrol boats, a private vessel, an air force helicopter and crews on land.

The alarm was raised by a local resident who heard screams and cries for help from the sea, local officials said.

It was not known how the boat, believed to have been a small dinghy, sank, and there was no immediate information on the identities or nationalities of the survivors and the dead.

Sonia Balleron, the head of the Greece mission for the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, said the group was “shocked and outraged” by the sinking and was providing emergency support to the survivors.

“These deaths are the tragic consequence of inhumane migration policies,” Balleron said in a statement. Human rights groups accuse European authorities of failing to provide legal migration paths for people seeking a better life in the continent.

Greece lies along one of the most popular routes into the European Union for people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Despite a crackdown by Greek authorities along the land and sea border with Turkey, thousands of people make it across, often from the Turkish coast to Greek islands using flimsy inflatable dinghies.

In recent months, smugglers have also increasingly turned to ferrying migrants in powerful speedboats. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)