The frozen bodies of seven more migrants have been discovered close to the Greek border, Turkish officials said on Thursday, bringing the death toll in the diplomatically-charged incident to 19, IgbereTV reports.
Turkey accuses border guards in neighbour Greece of allowing the migrants to die in the winter cold after stripping them of their clothes and then forcing them back across the border.
Greece has denied Turkey’s version of events, although a top EU official expressed alarm and said the claims needed to be investigated further.
“After search and rescue operations in the region, the number of migrants who were pushed back and froze to death has unfortunately risen to 19,” the governor’s office of Edirne on the border with Greece said in a statement.
The bodies of 12 migrants first discovered on Wednesday have been taken to a forensic medicine institution in Istanbul for identification, the private DHA news agency reported.
Turkish officials say they have no information yet about the migrants’ nationalities.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu on Wednesday posted blurred pictures of partially naked bodies lying by the roadside, saying they had been “stripped (of) their clothes and shoes” by Greek border guards.
Human rights groups believe that such actions, reported by migrants in different parts of the world, are designed to discourage fleeing people from trying to enter a particular country, and to look for a different route
