ATHENS: Greece rescued 18 migrants and recovered the bodies of two people, a woman and a man, close to a rocky shore on the island of Lesbos on Wednesday, the coastguard said.

The migrants are believed to have reached the island on a boat amid high winds in the Aegean Sea, a coastguard official said.

According to the migrants’ accounts, there were about 36 people on board and some had jumped into the sea, she added. Coastguards and police searched for more people onshore, the coastguard said.

Nearly 30,000 migrants crossed Channel to UK last year

Greece was at the frontline of a migrant crisis in 2015 where more than 1 million people, mostly Syrian refugees, crossed from Turkey to the European country by sea.

Migrant flows dropped significantly before rising again this year.