At least 15 die in migrant boat sinking off Greek island

Greece's coastguard said on Monday at least 15 people including children have died in a suspected migrant boat sinking off the Aegean island of Lesbos.

Eight of the bodies were recovered in Greek waters while the Turkish coastguard found another seven bodies, a Greek coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.

Two women, one of them pregnant, were recovered alive. Eight are still missing. 

"According to the pregnant woman, there were 25 people on board the boat that sank," the coastguard spokeswoman said.

The dead apparently include nine men, four women and two children, she said.

Greek authorities had received no distress call prior to finding the bodies, the coastguard spokeswoman said.

Several vessels are continuing the search. Weather conditions in the area are mild.

READ: Refugees in Greek legal limbo: 'I want to go back to Syria to die'

Greece's Aegean Sea islands are a primary transit point for refugees and migrants seeking to reach Europe from Turkey. Over a million people have landed in Greece since 2015, most of them fleeing civil war in Syria.

Though fewer than 10 nautical miles separate Lesbos from Turkish shores, hundreds of people have drowned trying to make the crossing since the refugee crisis began in 2015.

A deal in March 2016 between the EU and Ankara has all but closed the route down and just over 4,800 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey this year, according to the UN refugee agency data. An average of 20 arrive on Greek islands each day.

At least 173,000 people, mostly Syrians, landed in Greece in 2016. The number of refugees and migrants in Greece has swelled to about 62,000 in the last year, about 13,000 of whom are in camps on five eastern Aegean islands waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.

Violence has broken out in overcrowded camps on several occasions, as have protests against asylum delays. Twelve Syrian Kurds living in Lesbos's Moria camp for months began a hunger strike on Friday, the Athens News Agency reported. 

At least 900 migrants have died or gone missing while attempting to reach Europe by sea so far this year, while 36,000 have been rescued, International Organisation for Migration (IOM) spokesman Leonard Doyle said last week.

Nearly 9,000 people were rescued from the Mediterranean on Easter weekend.