- At least 16 refugees died on Friday when their boat wrecked off the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea.
- It is already the third accident of its kind in Christmas week, as the Greek coast guard announced.
- Small boats with migrants have also arrived in Italy and hundreds of people have been picked up in wooden boats by private sea rescue organizations.
According to the Greek state television, a boat with 82 people on board capsized off the island of Paros. According to initial information, the coast guard was able to rescue 41 migrants from the Aegean Sea. Fishermen from the island and boats from the coast guard took part in the rescue operation in the dark, it said. The boat was en route from Turkey to Italy.
The Greek authorities had previously announced that eleven bodies had been recovered after the shipwreck of another refugee boat northwest of Crete. 90 people, including 27 minors, were rescued after their sailing boat sank off the island of Antikythera in southern Greece on Thursday.
Boats overturned and sunken every day
Another 92 migrants were picked up by police in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula on Friday afternoon. Her sailing boat ran aground near the small port town of Gytheion. The coast guard announced that three suspected smugglers had been arrested.
On the night of Wednesday, a boat sank off the island of Folegandros, which is believed to have up to 50 people on board. Dozens of people are still missing. Three people were found dead.
The Greek shipping minister Giannis Plakiotakis said that tug gangs were responsible for the disasters. They don’t care about people’s lives. They forced dozens of people without life jackets into boats that didn’t even meet basic safety standards.
Boat arrivals also in Lecce
In Italy, too, two boats carrying migrants arrived within 24 hours. According to the Ansa agency, a sailboat with 74 people on board reached Santa Maria di Leuca, the southernmost Italian “boot heel” near Lecce, in the afternoon. There were also 25 unaccompanied minors and three women on the boat, the majority of whom are from Afghanistan.
The Guardia di Finanza financial police also identified two suspected smugglers on the boat. 154 migrants had already arrived in Santa Maria di Leuca on Friday afternoon.
Thousands stranded in Italy
The migrants try to get from the Turkish Aegean coast or from other states in the east of the Mediterranean to the Greek mainland or Italy. Greek Coast Guard officers estimated that around 11,000 people have come to Italy this way in the past few months.
In the past few days, numerous migrants have also reached the island of Lampedusa and Sardinia in the western Mediterranean. The Italian Ministry of the Interior registered more than 64,600 migrants who had reached Italy in boats on Friday this year. In the previous year there were around 34,100 people.
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