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 Greece's prime minister angrily condemned Europe's response to the refugee crisis Friday, accusing leaders of "crocodile tears" after 22 people drowned in two shipwrecks. 
 
 Alex Tsipras expressed "endless grief" at the latest tragedies, saying they had left Europe shamed. 
 
 He was speaking as the migrant death toll in the Aegean Sea reached nearly 50 over the past three days. 
 
 The Merchant Marine Ministry said 19 people were killed and 138 were rescued near the eastern Aegean Sea island of Kalymnos, in one of the worst accidents in Greek waters since the mass migrant flows started fleeing the war in Syria. 
 
 At least three more people died when another migrant boat sank off the nearby island of Rhodes, and three more were missing. On the islet of Agathonissi, a fisherman recovered the body of a boy missing from yet another accident on Wednesday. 
 
 Nearly 600 people were rescued by the coast guard in the past 24 hours, while thousands more made it safely to the islands. 
 
 Refugees, most of them Syrians, on a half-sunken catamaran nearing the Greek island of Lesbos. GIORGOS MOUTAFIS / Reuters 
 
 Meanwhile, the European Union remains at odds on how to deal with the influx, which has seen Greece has been a transit point for more than half a million refugees and migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East since January. 
 
 "I feel shamed as a member of this European leadership," Tsipras told the country's parliament, saying nations were "passing the buck." 
 
 "These are hypocritical, crocodile tears which are being shed for the dead children on the shores of the Aegean. Dead children always incite sorrow, but what about the children that are alive who come in thousands and are stacked on the streets? Nobody likes them." 
 
 He added: "I want to express ... my endless grief at the dozens of deaths and the human tragedy playing out in our seas. The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but [also] the very civilization of Europe." 
 
 Amanece en #lesbos con otro bote al límite. Y de nuevo están solo los chicos de @PROACTIVA_SERV y pescadores. pic.twitter.com/BHbuWEjOD7 — Arantza Diez (@arantzadiez) October 30, 2015 
 
 Four coast guard patrol vessels, a helicopter and three fishing boats helped rescue the survivors off Kalymnos, and nobody was listed as missing, the Merchant Marine Ministry said. The accident occurred shortly before midnight Thursday, when the wooden boat in which the migrants had left from Turkey took on water and sank in moderately strong winds. 
 
 Separately, local fishermen and volunteers on the Greek island of Lesbos rescued dozens — including children — from a half-sunken, overloaded catamaran. 
 
 A boy cries out for help as a half-sunken catamaran arrives off the Greek island of Lesbos on Friday. GIORGOS MOUTAFIS / Reuters 
 
 Meanwhile, the flow of migrants trying to reach Europe via the Russian Arctic slowed dramatically Thursday, partly due to a shortage of bicycles to cross the border, a source who deals with them told Reuters. 
 
 People seeking asylum in Norway have taken to using bicycles to cross the border from Russia because pedestrian traffic is banned and drivers of vehicles are fined if they carry passengers across without the proper documents. 
 
 The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said would-be asylum seekers were collecting in the Russian town of Nickel, the nearest big settlement to the border post, now they cannot cross into Norway. 
 
 "There are more than 500 of the Syrians here. They are continuing to flow into Nickel," said the source. 
 
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 "The local shops are empty of bicycles. No bus or taxi would take the Syrians to Norway because they do not have valid visas and the drivers would be fined by the Norwegians and stripped of their permits to work on international routes." 
 
 Migrants were staying in hotels and dormitories in Nickel, where the temperature was around freezing and a snowstorm has moved in, the source said. ||||| Migrants walk as they wait to travel to the Greek island of Lesbos, near the Aegean town of Ayvacik, Turkey, Friday, Jan. 29, 2016. Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said in Berlin on Friday that he is expecting... (Associated Press) 
 
 ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A boat smuggling migrants to Greece slammed into rocks off the Turkish coast Saturday and capsized, killing at least 33 people including five children, as the choppy Aegean Sea continued to claim asylum-seekers' lives this month at an appalling pace, officials said. 
 
 Coast guard officials said they rescued 75 people from the 17-meter (56-foot) vessel but government officials said they suspected more were trapped inside the sunken vessel and the death toll was likely to rise. Video footage on the Turkish shoreline showed police walking among bodies of several dead as they washed ashore, among them a toddler lying on his back in navy blue clothing. 
 
 The International Organization for Migration says drowning deaths are running at four times the rate of 2015, when many thousands daily sought to enter the European Union via Turkey by reaching one of more than a dozen offshore Greek islands, particularly nearby Lesbos. 
 
 Saturday's deaths take the drowning total for January above 250, whereas the agency recorded 805 drowning deaths on Turkey-Greece smuggling routes throughout 2015. 
 
 A Turkish government official said he expects rescue workers to find more dead who were trapped inside the wreckage of the boat, which sank shortly after departing from the Aegean resort of Ayvacik, barely 8 kilometers (5 miles) north of the Lesbos coastline. 
 
 Saim Eskioglu, deputy governor for the coastal Canakkale province that includes Ayvacik, said the boat "hit rocks soon after it left the coast and, unfortunately, it sank." 
 
 "We believe there are more dead bodies inside the boat," he told CNN-Turk television. 
 
 Ayvacik's mayor, Mehmet Unal Sahin, said most of the migrants were Syrians. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the boat also bore natives of Afghanistan and Myanmar. 
 
 In a statement, the Turkish coast guard said it dispatched three boats, a team of divers and a helicopter after receiving calls for help. The coast guard said its rescue teams recovered 33 bodies and were continuing to search. 
 
 A private Turkish news agency, Dogan, said police arrested a Turkish man suspected of being the smuggler who organized Saturday's disastrous sea crossing. 
 
 Journalists at the scene said weather conditions Saturday on the Turkish coast were relatively mild, with light winds and temperatures around 12 degrees Celsius (54 Fahrenheit). 
 
 Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said the rate of deaths on Turkey-Greece human trafficking routes was "increasing at an alarming rate." 
 
 Millman, speaking before Saturday's tragedy, said the rate of fatalities was running exceptionally high versus 2015. He said 55,000 had crossed by sea into Greece this month, a "very small number" versus the monthly flow in 2015. 
 
 Turkey, which is hosting an estimated 2.5 million refugees from Syria, in November agreed to fight smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants into Europe. In return, the European Union pledged 3 billion euros ($3.25 billion) to help improve the refugees' conditions. 
 
 The country says it has started rejecting Syrians who arrive without valid visas via third countries. It also has started to grant work permits to Syrians as an incentive for them to stay put in Turkey.
– Twenty-two migrants—many of them children—drowned in two boat accidents Thursday and Friday in Greece's Aegean Sea, the BBC reports. According to NBC News, the fatal shipwrecks are part of a particularly deadly three-day stretch in Greece, with more than 50 migrants and refugees dying in the Aegean Sea. The worst accident came shortly before midnight Thursday, when 19 migrants were killed and another 138 rescued when their boat broke up near the Greek island of Kalymnos. A second accident Friday near the Greek island of Rhodes left at least three dead, CNN reports. Greek prime minister Alex Tsipras says he's ashamed of the response to the migrant crisis from European leaders, who need to stop passing off responsibility while people die, the BBC reports. Another 29 migrants drowned off the coast of Lesbos late Wednesday, according to the AP. Tsipras accused European leaders of crying "crocodile tears" for the migrant and refugee children drowning in Greek waters, NBC reports. "The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children, but [also] the very civilization of Europe," he says. According to the BBC, the UN estimates 700,000 migrants—most of them refugees from the war in Syria—have crossed into Europe by boat this year.