SOFIA: The EU border agency Frontex said one of its maritime patrols rescued around 900 migrants on Thursday near the Greek island of Lesbos as weather conditions have made the sea crossing more dangerous. “We’re picking up all the migrants we encounter (at sea) because bad weather and cold make the risks much higher now than in the summer,” Ewa Moncure said. The migrants were picked up by a Bulgarian ship working in Frontex patrols between the port of Mytilene on Lesbos and the Turkish coast, a distance of around eight kilometres (five miles). During the summer months, up to 7,000 refugees and migrants arrived in EU member Greece every day after making the trip across the Aegean Sea from Turkey in makeshift or overcrowded boats, and many including children have drowned. A photograph of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, face down in the sand on a Turkish beach, shocked the world when it was published in September 2015 after his family decided to make the risky journey to Greece in an open boat. More than a million people, mostly refugees and migrants from war-torn Syria and Iraq, arrived in the European Unon last year amid the worst crisis of its kind in Europe since World War II. Meanwhile, Bulgaria’s parliament voted on Thursday to let its army assist police in guarding the Balkan country’s borders to avoid a refugee influx that has overwhelmed some of its neighbours. Over 30,000 migrants entered Bulgaria, which is outside the European Union’s passport-free Schengen travel, last year, nearly three times more than in 2014. But very few stay in the European Union’s poorest state, preferring to journey onwards to wealthier western EU countries like Germany and Sweden. But Sofia’s move coincided with tightening border controls along the main migration corridor from Greece northward through Macedonia and Serbia, raising concern increasing numbers of migrants may try alternate routes through Bulgaria. A bill on amendments and supplements to Bulgaria’s Defence and Armed Forces Act was passed unanimously at first reading, with lawmakers authorizing troops to help handle any migrant wave in “extraordinary and crisis circumstances”. Final approval at second reading is anticipated next week. “We have full readiness for the army taking part in border protection; migration pressure increases as the weather gets warmer,” Defence Minister Nikolay Nenchev said. The EU is struggling to handle the biggest influx of refugees since World War Two, with more than 1.1 million entering the 28-member bloc in 2015 alone – mainly from Middle East and African countries plagued by war and deprivation. Last month, Bulgaria’s government approved additional funding of up to 34.1 million levs ($19.42 million) for further construction of sections of a barbed wire fence along its border with Turkey, from which most migrants make their way to Europe. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already said that a fence should be erected along the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece to curb the migrant influx into Europe.