At least 19 irregular migrants have been found frozen to death near the Greek-Turkish border after Greek border officials stripped them of their clothes and pushed them back to Turkish territory, local authorities said on Thursday, raising the death toll from 12 a day earlier.
“Unfortunately, the number of immigrants whose dead bodies we recovered in the search and rescue activities that have continued yesterday and today has reached 19,” the governor’s office in the northwestern province of Edirne said in a statement.
Turkish authorities recovered the bodies of seven more migrants who were reportedly pushed back by Greek border forces, raising the death toll from 12 on Wednesday.
Turkish gendarmerie teams continue to sweep the area from the land and air with drones in the hopes of finding more migrants who might be alive in the area, with medical teams kept at the ready, the statement added.
The country’s interior minister announced on Wednesday that the initial 12 irregular migrants were found frozen to death in Edirne, which shares a border with Greece.
