A toddler and a baby have been found dead aboard two different boats heading to Europe in recent days as people smugglers continue to lead illegal migrants to their deaths while profiting from their misery.
The first incident took place on Friday off the Greek island of Lesbos where a migrant boat, a rubber dinghy, crashed against the rocks of the island by waves, injuring two of the 30 migrants on board. the Greek coastguard stated that it found the migrants along with a baby boy who had died.
The boy, said to be just two months old, was taken to a local hospital and later pronounced dead. The charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), meanwhile, claimed that they had tried to reach the migrants to help but had been blocked by Greek police for at least two hours, the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
Just days after the two-month child was found dead, a migrant boat sank off the coast of North Africa while heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa with forty-three people on board.
The Italian coastguard conducted sea rescue operations and managed to rescue all except a two-year-old girl who died several hours following the rescue. Another child, the brother of the two-year-old also suffered from drowning syndrome but was able to be resuscitated.
The two small children are just the latest to be sent to their deaths while trying to reach Europe by murderous people smugglers this year.
In September, two Syrian children aged just one and two years old died aboard a boat that had originally set sail from Turkey and reached Italy. The two children allegedly died of thirst during the journey and four others are also said to have died, a teenager and three adults, including an elderly woman.
Illegal or clandestine immigration remains an extremely dangerous gamble, with tens of thousands killed in recent years, lured by a combination of Europe’s weak borders making the crossing basically feasible, and by people smugglers making a quick buck from human suffering, rape, and murder.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.