Greece Rescues 1,400 From Sea

LESBOS, Greece (AP) -- The latest as hundreds of thousands of people seeking safety flood into Europe in search of a new life. All times local.

1:35 p.m.

Greece's coast guard says it has rescued more than 1,400 people in 39 separate search-and-rescue operations in the eastern Aegean over the weekend.

The wave of people fleeing conflict and poverty to come to Europe is continuing unabated despite worsening weather conditions. High winds churned the Aegean over the weekend.

The coast guard said it had picked up 1,431 people near the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Farmakonissi, Kalymnos, Kalolymnos, Symi and Rhodes between Friday morning and Monday morning.

More than 70 people, many of them children, have died in the last week when their smuggling boats overturned or sank in rough seas as they tried to reach Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast.

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1:25 p.m.

Bavaria's governor is declaring himself satisfied, for now, with a weekend compromise with fellow conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on how to handle Europe's migrant crisis.

Horst Seehofer has been the most prominent critic of Merkel's welcoming approach to the refugees and had demanded government action by Sunday to limit the influx. Leaders of Merkel's governing coalition didn't agree on new action Sunday but agreed to meet again on Thursday.

However, Seehofer's Bavaria-only Christian Social Union stepped back from a spat with the rest of Merkel's conservative bloc. The conservatives issued a joint paper calling for a reduction in the number of refugees arriving in Germany and for "transit zones" to weed out people who have no realistic claim to asylum.

About 577,000 people seeking asylum have arrived in Germany from January to the end of September.

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12:35 p.m.

The mayor of the Greek island of Lesbos says there's no more room to bury the increasing number of asylum-seekers killed in shipwrecks of smuggling boats coming in from nearby Turkey.

Mayor Spyros Galinos told Greece's Vima FM radio Monday there were more than 50 bodies in the morgue on his eastern Aegean island that he was still trying to find a burial location for. Galinos said he was trying to fast-track procedures so a field next to the main cemetery could be taken over for burials.

Hundreds of thousands of people have made the short but dangerous crossing from Turkey to Greek islands this year. With rougher fall weather coming on, the bodies of 19 people were recovered from the Aegean in three separate incidents on Sunday alone.

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11:40 p.m.

An Afghan official in Kabul says authorities will take back all Afghan citizens deported from Germany, which is struggling to accommodate the hundreds of thousands who have arrived this year seeking safety.

Afghans currently make up the second largest nationality, after Syrians, arriving in Europe.

The deputy presidential spokesman, Zafar Hashemi, says as a signatory to the Geneva Convention, Afghanistan is obliged to accept its citizens whose asylum applications have been rejected. He says Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed the issue.

Germany's interior minister has said many Afghans who arrive will have to go home.

Officials say Monday that 120,000 Afghans have left the country so far this year.

(KA)