• Death toll from the sinking of two migrant boats went up to 21, and many people are still missing.
• Bodies floated in the water with pieces of broken boats near a Greek island.
• Coast guard officials said that 10 women were saved and that 13 other migrants were thought to be missing.

The death toll from the sinking of two migrant boats went up to 21, and many people are still missing, bodies floated in the water with pieces of broken boats near a Greek island.

The boats sank hundreds of miles apart. In one case, residents and firefighters worked through the night to pull shipwrecked migrants up steep cliffs to safety.

The deaths made things worse between Greece and Turkey, which are neighbors and are in a heated fight over immigration and maritime boundaries.

After a dinghy carrying about 40 people sank, the coast guard on the eastern island of Lesbos found the bodies of 16 young African women and one young man. Coast guard officials said that 10 women were saved and that 13 other migrants were thought to be missing.

“The women who were rescued were in a full state of panic so we are still trying to work out what happened,” coast guard spokesman Nikos Kokkalas told state television. “The women were all from African countries, aged 20 upward. There is a search on land as well as at sea and we hope that survivors made it to land.”

The second rescue effort started a few hundred kilometers (miles) to the west, where a sailboat hit rocks and sank near the island of Kythira.

At least four migrants’ bodies were found in the sailboat’s floating trash. Officials said that the deaths would be recorded when the bodies were found. They also said that 80 people from Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan had been saved, and the search was still going on for up to 11 people who were thought to still be missing.

Overnight on Kythira, winds reached 45 mph (70 kph). People who were still alive were pulled to safety up steep cliffs while others at the bottom were hit by waves as they waited their turn on small pieces of rock.

[embedpost slug=”thai-mass-shooting-suspect-killed-wife-and-stepson-before-suicide/”]