39 people, including five children, drowned when a vessel carrying refugees sank off Turkey's western coast on Saturday morning.
The Turkish Coast Guard dispatched rescue boats to the scene after the vessel packed with Syrian, Afghan, and Burmese refugees capsized off the western coast of Turkey, near Çanakkale's Ayvacık district while it was on its way to the Greek island of Lesbos.
Rescue squads pulled the bodies of 39 people from the Aegean Sea and rescued 75 others.
"At least 33 people are dead but I am afraid the numbers will rise as divers continue the search," Mehmet Ünal Şahin, the mayor of Ayvacık, told CNNTürk news channel by phone on Saturday.
"Local people woke up to the sound of screaming migrants and we have been carrying out rescue work since dawn. We have an 80-kilometre-long coast just across from Lesbos, which is very hard to keep under control."
The survivors were taken to Edremit State Hospital in ambulances.
The initial reports had suggested that ten people, including five children, were killed.
Turkey, which is home to some 2.2 million refugees from Syria's civil war, has become a hub for migrants seeking to reach Europe, many of whom pay people smugglers thousands of dollars for the risky crossing.
