Hundreds missing in sinking off Crete
Print Edition
THE bodies of more than 100 migrants have washed up on a Libyan beach as a new migrant boat tragedy unfolded in the Mediterranean south of Greece yesterday.
Desperate rescue efforts were under way off the Greek island of Crete where at least 340 people were saved after a vessel believed to have left Africa with hundreds of migrants on board capsized.
The Libyan navy, meanwhile, said it had found the bodies of at least 104 migrants on the shore in the western Libyan town of Zwara, and warned that the toll could rise.
“The number of bodies retrieved on Thursday evening was 104 but the toll is expected to rise since an average boat carries 115-125 passengers,” said Libyan navy spokesman Colonel Ayoub Qassem.
In Greece, efforts were under way to find hundreds believed missing after the capsize off Crete. The coastguard has already recovered four bodies.
Spokesman Nikos Lagadianos said at least 340 people had been rescued, The International Organization for Migration said the vessel is believed to have left Africa with at least 700 migrants on board.
Of the survivors, over 240 are on route to Italy, 75 to Egypt, 16 to Turkey and seven to Malta, the coastguard said.
Yesterday’s sinking marked the second migrant vessel found in that area of the southern Aegean Sea since last week, indicating that people smugglers may be forging a new route to avoid NATO ships.
A coastguard spokeswoman said four ships that were passing through the area were taking part in the search in clear but windy conditions about 75 nautical miles south of the island.
“The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds,” she said.
It was not immediately clear where exactly the boat had left from or where it was headed, or the nationalities of those on board.
The spokeswoman said a passing ship had raised the alarm and the coastguard immediately sent two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene. About half the 25-meter boat was completely underwater, she said.
The four deaths are the first in Greek waters since April, as a controversial March deal between the EU and Turkey designed to halt the flow of migrants using the popular Aegean route led to a sharp drop in arrivals.
Nevertheless, some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, according to the UN refugee agency.
More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year — the vast majority of them on crossings between Libya and Italy.
The most recent deadly incident in the Aegean was in April when four women and a child drowned off the island of Samos.
Greek tourist islands in the Aegean witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people crossing in flimsy boats from Turkey last year, many of them fleeing the war in Syria.
But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey.
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