The Turkish Coast Guard has launched a search for an 8-month-old infant after a migrant boat carrying 15 people sank off Turkey's Aegean coast on Friday.
Media reports say the migrants, all Syrian nationals, and a human smuggler guiding them, were traveling from Bodrum in the southwestern Turkey to a nearby Greek island when their overcrowded rubber boat sank.
Four Coast Guard boats dispatched to the area rescued all 14 adults but a baby was missing according to the accounts of the rescued migrants.
Turkey has prevented some 269,059 illegal migrants, the highest ever, from crossing into Europe in the first eight and a half months of this year.
The country is located in between the European and African continents and is often used as a junction point to enter the European countries.
Each year thousands of illegal migrants, many of them fleeing war, hunger and poverty back in their home countries, take a dangerous route to cross into Europe for a better life.
Some of the migrants reach Turkey on foot before eventually taking a dangerous journey across the Aegean to reach the Greek islands. People have lost their lives trying to make this journey of "hope" while many of them were rescued by Turkish security forces.
