At least 14 migrants have drowned after a boat they were travelling in collided with a coast guard vessel off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast during a chase. The collision happened near the coast of Demre, in Antalya province, on Monday (March 9).

The vessel, which was carrying Afghans, ignored calls to stop and tried at high-speed to escape coast guard boats, the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted local Governor Hulusi Sahin as saying. Mr Sahin said seven people were rescued from the sea by coast guard teams and given immediate medical care.

Fourteen others reached the shore where they were detained by police officers.

Search and rescue operations were continuing by land, sea and air to find any remaining survivors who could still be missing.

Authorities have launched both a judicial and an administrative investigation into the incident, according to Anadolu.

News of the drownings comes after the United Nation’s migration agency said more than 600 people trying to reach Europe had been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean since the beginning of 2026.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the figure marked the deadliest start to a year in the Mediterranean since the agency began recording such data in 2014.

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At least 1,340 people died in the central Mediterranean last year, according to the agency’s figures, published by Reuters.

Seven migrants drowned off the coast of Turkey in January last year as they attempted to get to Greece.

The Turkish coast guard said at the time that the migrants were travelling in an inflatable dinghy towards the Greek island of Samos.

Agence France Presse reported that the migrants had left the seaside resort Kusadasi and jumped into the sea when coast guards tried to stop their vessel.

The IOM has said a clampdown on legal migration routes has forced more migrants into the hands of people smugglers across the world.

At least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide last year, according to the IOM.