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Hundreds rescued as migrant boat capsizes in Mediterranean Hundreds rescued as migrant boat capsizes in Mediterranean
(about 1 hour later)
A migrant boat carrying hundreds of people has capsized off the Greek island of Crete and a major rescue operation is under way, the Greek coastguard has said. The Greek coastguard has rescued more than 300 people and recovered three bodies in an ongoing operation after a migrant boat sank south of Crete.
The coastguard told the Associated Press on Friday that 302 people had been rescued and three bodies recovered in the rescue operation so far. “The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds,” a spokeswoman for the coastguard told Agence France-Presse on Friday. “People are in the water, boats crossing the area have thrown lifebuoys and are moving to save the migrants.”
Earlier a spokeswoman for the coastguard had told Agence-France Presse: “The number of people in distress could be counted in the hundreds. People are in the water, boats crossing the area have thrown lifebuoys and are moving to save the migrants.” She said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel about 75 nautical miles south of Crete in the southern Aegean Sea. The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene while at least four ships in the area joined the rescue. About half of the roughly 82ft boat was underwater.
She said a passing ship spotted the sinking vessel about 75 nautical miles south of Crete, Greece’s largest island, in the southern Aegean Sea. The total number of people on board the boat is not known, and it was not immediately clear where the boat and its passengers were from, or where the vessel was heading. The operation to locate potentially missing people is continuing.
The coastguard rushed two patrol boats, a plane and a helicopter to the scene while at least four ships crossing the area joined the rescue operation. At least 1,000 people have died or are missing and presumed dead after a string of deadly incidents in the Mediterranean over the past week, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
About half of the 25-metre-long boat was underwater, the spokeswoman said. The IOM said on Tuesday estimated deaths until the end of May rose to 2,443 on all Mediterranean routes after a surge in reported shipwrecks and other incidents in recent days. The number of estimated deaths has risen by 34% over the first five months of 2015. The spate of deaths has caused the IOM to revise its previous assessment.
It was not immediately clear where the boat had left from or where it was headed. “For the first three weeks of May 2016, IOM estimated just 13 fatalities in three incidents,” said IOM. “None of them occurred on the eastern Mediterranean route between Turkey and Greece, where through the first four months of the year nearly 400 migrants and refugees drowned. We saw this as a hopeful trend. The events of this past week – with at least 1,000 deaths – have obviously changed our assessment. The past eight days marks one of the deadliest periods yet in the migration crisis, which is now in its fourth year.”
Some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since January, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. It said more than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey this year. About 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean since January – more than double the nearly 92,000 who arrived in Europe during the first five months of 2015, according to the IOM. By the end of last year more than 1 million had made the trip.
The vast majority were killed crossing between Libya and Italy, as arrivals to Greece have fallen sharply since the EU entered a deal on 20 March with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants. Hundreds of thousands of mainly Syrian refugees took the short but dangerous route to Greece from Turkey last year in small inflatable boats. That crossing was virtually sealed after an EU-Turkey deal in March. Now, warm weather and calmer seas have led to a surge in the number of people trying to reach Italy from Libya, where people-smugglers operate with relative impunity.
On 27 May the Greek coastguard intercepted a boat off Crete carrying 65 Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani migrants, and under the control of two suspected people traffickers – a Ukrainian and an Egyptian.
The coastguard did not indicate if the boat, which the migrants said had left from Turkey, was headed for Italy or the smugglers had chosen the route through the southern Aegean to reach Greece by avoiding Nato ships deployed further north.
The Nato deployment is aimed at cutting off the Aegean Sea route used by hundreds of thousands of people to reached Europe since last year.