At least 59 people have died and dozens are feared missing off the coast of southern Greece after a fishing boat carrying migrants capsized and sank, authorities said Wednesday.
A large search and rescue operation was launched in the area. Authorities said 104 people have been rescued so far following the nighttime incident some 75 kilometres southwest of Greece’s southern Peloponnese region.
Four of the survivors were hospitalized with symptoms of hypothermia. It was unclear how many passengers might remain missing at sea after the 59 bodies were recovered, the Greek coast guard said.
Six coast guard vessels, a navy frigate, a military transport plane, an air force helicopter, several private vessels and a drone from the European Union border protection agency, Frontex, were taking part in the ongoing search.
The Italy-bound boat is believed to have sailed from the Tobruk area in eastern Libya. The Italian coast guard first alerted Greek authorities and Frontex about the approaching vessel on Tuesday.
At the southern port of Kalamata, dozens of rescued migrants were taken to sheltered areas set up by the ambulance services and the United Nations Refugee Agency to receive dry clothes and medical attention.
Libyan authorities have launched a major crackdown on migrants earlier this month across eastern Libya. Activists have said several thousand migrants, including Egyptians, Syrians, Sudanese and Pakistanis, have been detained. Libyan authorities deported many Egyptians to their home country through a land crossing point.
In western Libya, authorities have raided migrant hubs in the capital, Tripoli, and other towns over the past few weeks. At least 1,800 migrants were detained and taken to government-run detention centres, according to the UN refugee agency.
Mediterranean smugglers are increasingly taking larger boats into international waters off the Greek mainland to try to avoid local coast guard patrols.
Deadly incidents at levels not seen in 6 years
On Sunday, 90 migrants on a U.S.-flagged yacht were rescued in the area after they made a distress call.
Separately on Wednesday, a yacht with 81 migrants on board was towed to a port on the south coast of Greece’s island of Crete after authorities received a distress call.
The latest incident comes as the UN migration agency reported on Tuesday that 2022 was the deadliest for migrants in the Middle East and North Africa seeking to reach Europe since 2017.
About 3,800 people died on sea and land migration routes within and from the Middle East-North Africa region, according to data released by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project. That’s 11 per cent higher compared to 2021 and the highest since 2017, when the project documented the deaths of 4,255 people in the region.
The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest first quarter since 2017, the same agency has reported, with 441 documented migrant deaths.
“The situation in the Mediterranean has been a humanitarian crisis for over a decade now,” IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli said in April. “And the fact that deaths continue on its own is very alarming, but the fact that that’s increased is extremely alarming because it means that very little concrete action was taken to address the issue.”
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