GREEK coastguard patrol boats and a helicopter were searching for potential missing people off an eastern Aegean island today after an overnight collision between a patrol vessel and a speedboat carrying migrants that left at least 15 people dead.

Twenty-four migrants, including 11 children, were injured and were hospitalised on the island of Chios following the collision late on Tuesday night.

Two coastguard officers were also injured, with one remaining hospitalised today, the coastguard said.

The bodies of 11 men and three women were recovered from the sea shortly after the collision and one woman died later in a hospital, authorities said.

The number of people who had been on the speedboat was not clear.

Details of exactly what happened were unclear.

According to a coastguard statement, one of its patrol boats came across the speedboat late on Tuesday night making its way towards Chios without its navigation lights on.

The speedboat refused to stop despite sound and visual signals by the patrol boat crew and changed direction, colliding with the patrol boat and capsizing, the statement said.

Michalis Giannakos, the head of Greece’s public hospital workers’ union, said on Tuesday night that staff at the hospital in Chios were placed on alert overnight to handle the sudden influx of injured and dead.