At least eight migrants drown in shipwreck off Greek island of Samos

Six children died in the disaster, while the police found 36 survivors alive on Samos and three people were rescued.

Greece’s coast guard has found the bodies of eight migrants, including six children, who drowned off the island of Samos, authorities said, in the second migrant shipwreck in the Aegean Sea this month.

Greek police found a further 36 people alive in the northern part of Samos on Monday, while three people, trapped in a rocky area of the island, were rescued by coast guard officers, the coast guard said.

A Greek coast guard official said authorities were alerted about the incident by a nongovernmental organisation and estimated that about 50 people had been on board the vessel.

It was not immediately clear whether anyone else was still missing. The nationalities of the people on the boat were not known.

In a separate incident on the island of Lesbos, an elderly man died as a group of 27 migrants made landfall in a small boat, the coast guard said.