Since the sinking of a migrant boat off Greece on Wednesday, 78 bodies have been recovered at sea by the coastguards.
By LL with AFP
© GREEK COAST GUARD/HANDOUT / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP
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DTwo days after a migrant boat sank off the coast of Greece, authorities have announced that hopes of finding survivors are “dimming”. They specify that the search will continue on Friday.
“Hopes of finding survivors are dwindling minute by minute after this tragic shipwreck, but the search must continue,” Stella Nanou, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told AFP. ) in Greece.
Seventy-eight bodies were recovered from the sea on Wednesday by the Greek Coast Guard hours after an old and overloaded trawler capsized and sank 47 nautical miles (87 km) from Pylos on the Peloponnese peninsula, according to an official report.
One hundred and four people were rescued and transferred to the port of Kalamata in southern Greece. “According to the images released by the authorities and certain testimonies of the survivors, hundreds of people would be on board”, repeated Mr.me Nanu.
The search in the area of the sinking continued throughout the night from Thursday to Friday, according to the coast guard. “Currently a frigate and a navy helicopter are on site and three boats […] are participating in the search,” said a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
Smugglers implicated for “human trafficking”
Police have arrested nine Egyptians, aged between 20 and 40, suspected of being smugglers, according to a judicial source. These men, arrested among the survivors, were brought before the Kalamata prosecutor’s office on Friday and are due to appear before an investigating judge on Monday.
They are implicated for “trafficking in human beings”, according to this source. A total of 27 people remained hospitalized on Friday, including one of those arrested, according to the Coast Guard.
Some survivors must be transferred during the day to the Malakasa migrant camp, northeast of Athens, according to public television ERT.
The fishing boat had left Egypt before boarding migrants in Tobruk, a port city in eastern Libya, and had set sail for Italy, a port source told AFP.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it “fears that hundreds more people” have drowned “in one of the most devastating tragedies in the Mediterranean in a decade”.