17 refugees rescued off Greek island

ATHENS -- Greek Coast Guard rescued 17 refugees from a dinghy off the coasts of Chios island in the Aegean Sea on Saturday, according to an e-mail press release.

The refugees whose nationalities have not been identified were safely transferred to the island's port, the Greek Coast Guard said.

The rescue comes as Greece has started to see an increase of refugee flows via the Mediterranean Sea after two years of relatively lull thanks to the EU-Turkey agreement aimed at stemming the refugee flows to Europe.

In the first two months of 2018, Greece recorded 8,394 arrivals according to the Greek Ministry of Information. It's a growth compared with the 6,336 arrivals registered the same period of last year, according to the e-mail report.

Throughout 2017, the number of arrivals compared to 2016 had shrank by 70 percent, according to Greece's National Coordinating Center for Borders control, Migration and Asylum, according to the same report.

During the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016 more than 1 million refugees and migrants had landed on Greek shores and continued their journey to central and northern Europe before the closure of the borders along the Balkan route in February 2016.

About 60,000 people have been stranded in Greece in the past two years, while 21,853 have been relocated in other European countries in the same period.

In 2017, 683 individuals have been returned to Turkey in the context of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, Greek authorities said.