The toll of the sinking of a boat of migrants off the Greek peninsula of the Peloponnese, Wednesday, June 14, continues to grow: the latest reports at least seventy-eight dead. This is the heaviest toll in Greece since June 3, 2016, when at least 320 people died or disappeared in a shipwreck.
The boat on board which there are “hundreds” of migrants, according to a source in the Ministry of Migration, capsized 47 nautical miles (87 kilometers) from the Greek coast, in international waters while one hundred and four people were killed. been rescued so far.
The rescued people were being transported by boat to the port of Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese, according to a statement from the coast guard. Four other people were evacuated by helicopter, also to Kalamata where they were to be hospitalized. The Greek Coast Guard added that at the time of the sinking of the boat, none of the people on board, whose nationality was not specified, were equipped with life jackets.
The President of the Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, is expected on site.
The boat had sailed from Libya
The boat was first spotted on Tuesday afternoon by a plane from Frontex, the European Border Surveillance Agency, but the migrants on board “refused any assistance”, according to a previous statement from the Greek port authorities. In addition to the port police patrol boats, a Greek navy frigate, an air force plane and helicopter as well as six boats that sailed in the area participated in this rescue operation.
According to initial information from the authorities, the migrant boat had sailed from Libya to Italy. At the external borders of the European Union (EU) in the Mediterranean, Greece is a more common passage for migrants seeking to reach the EU from neighboring Turkey.
Many often deadly shipwrecks take place in the Aegean Sea while Greece is regularly accused by NGOs and media producing videos of turning back migrants seeking asylum in the EU, out of its territory. Besides this passage, these people also try to pass directly to Italy by crossing the Mediterranean in the south of the Peloponnese or the island of Crete.
On Wednesday, a struggling sailboat with eighty migrants on board sailing off Crete was also rescued and towed by coast guard patrol boats to the port of Kaloi Limenes in the south of the island, according to Greek Port Police. .