ELEVEN refugees drowned in heavy seas on the dangerous crossing from Turkey to Greece yesterday after a boat carrying nearly 30 people sank near the island of Samos.

A Greek coastguard spokeswoman said that the victims included five women, four babies and two children.

Fifteen other passengers were rescued and there is an ongoing search for “one or two missing.”

All but one of the victims were retrieved from the sunken 20-foot plastic boat, which now lies in waters 10 feet deep just 20 yards off Samos’s rocky coast.

Police on the nearby island of Lesbos also recovered more bodies from the water.

German police revealed yesterday that two Syrian asylum-seekers had been beaten with baseball bats on Saturday night by several masked attackers in the eastern town of Wismar on the Baltic sea.

Police in nearby Rostock said that the men had been standing outside their shelter when the group started harassing and beating them.

After the attackers fled, the injured refugees were taken to hospital for treatment.

Police have not been able to track down or identify the attackers and did not say how many people were involved in the attack.

Attacks against asylum-seekers and refugee shelters in Germany have increased sharply in recent weeks.