79 Drown, Hundreds Missing in Migrant Shipwreck off Greece

Wed Jun 14 2023
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ATHENS: In the early hours of Wednesday, a migrant boat carrying hundreds of people sank off the Greek coast, resulting in the death of at least 79 individuals, according to the Greek Coast Guard.

Tragically, none of the passengers aboard the fishing boat were wearing life jackets at the time of the incident. Over 100 migrants have been rescued from the water and transported to the city of Kalamata for medical attention.

The exact number of people on board the ill-fated vessel remains unclear. Survivors have estimated that there may have been as many as 750 passengers, leading authorities to fear that the death toll will significantly rise.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) tweeted earlier, indicating that they believed there were “up to 400 people” on board the boat. State broadcaster ERT reported, based on preliminary information, that the boat had departed from Tobruk, Libya.

Alarm Phone, an NGO providing assistance to distressed migrants at sea, received a call from the boat on Tuesday afternoon, during which the passengers expressed their desperate situation and doubts about their survival through the night. Disturbingly, the captain reportedly abandoned the vessel three hours after the distress call, leaving the passengers without sufficient provisions.

A merchant vessel provided water to the boat around 8 pm local time on Tuesday. The last contact Alarm Phone had with the boat occurred just before 1 am on Wednesday, when the call abruptly ended after hearing partial words from the distressed passengers.

Search and Rescue Operations Underway at Greek Coast

Search and rescue operations, conducted by the Coast Guard, are underway in international waters, 47 nautical miles off the coast of Pylos in the southwestern Peloponnese. According to Greek officials, the boat was enroute to Italy.

Greece has been at the forefront of the European migrant crisis, serving as an entry point to the European Union for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The number of undocumented arrivals on European shores by sea has risen significantly this year due to ongoing conflicts, global inequality, and the climate crisis.

Figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) indicate that over 36,000 people arrived in the Mediterranean region of Europe from January to March 2023, nearly doubling the number compared to the same period in 2022. This marks the highest influx since the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016, when over 1 million people arrived on European shores, straining EU solidarity and causing border chaos.

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