LESBOS, Greece – Drowned migrants float on the churning sea. On shore, wailing women search for loved ones among the shivering, wide-eyed survivors. A rescuer tries to revive a toddler who lies unconscious in her sodden striped sweater.

The scenes bring home a sobering reality: While the flow of migrants into Europe tends to abate as winter nears and the journey becomes more dangerous, this year it has only risen as thousands of people brave death in raging seas and freezing temperatures.

Refugees in Molivos, Greece, are among 242 people rescued from a boat that sank in rough seas off the Greek island’s north coast. Eight drowned and 33 are missing. The Associated Press

On the beaches of Lesbos, children who looked as young as 4 appeared to be in shock as rescuers wrapped them with blankets to protect against the cold. They were among 242 people rescued from a boat that sank overnight in rough seas off the Greek island’s north coast.

Eight people drowned and 33 remained missing. Authorities found the body of one more drowned migrant believed to be from that shipwreck late Thursday.

In all, five separate incidents in the eastern Aegean Sea on Wednesday left at least 12 people dead, most of them children.

Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II is entering a perilous and uncharted phase, as the usual pattern of migrant season ending by autumn is overturned by intensifying fighting in Syria and overcrowding in refugee centers in Turkey and Lebanon. Asylum applications in the European Union are expected to exceed 1 million this year, higher that the peak of 700,000 recorded in the early 1990s, when wars tore Yugoslavia apart.

Lesbos has borne the brunt of the refugee crisis in Greece, with more than 300,000 people reaching the island this year on small boats from Turkey, police say. More than a third of that number has come in October alone.

After the latest tragedy, paramedics and volunteers scrambled on the seafront to resuscitate infants, tearing off their soaked clothes, as survivors were carried or staggered onto land and were wrapped in emergency foil blankets. Eighteen children were hospitalized, three of them in serious condition, local officials said.

Local fisherman Manolis Galanakis said the boat sank in gale-force winds, and smugglers on the nearby Turkish coast would have been aware of the risk.

“Crossing in those conditions would be very tough,” he said. “They are criminals. They took their money, put them on boats, and sent them to their death.”

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