The slaughter off the Greek islands continues to continue. In total, the European country has recorded three shipwrecks since Wednesday.
The Greek coast guard is on the search this Saturday for survivors after the sinking of a new boat loaded with migrants in the Aegean Sea, which has brought the toll of these repeated accidents this week to at least 30 dead. Late Friday, the coast guard recovered the bodies of 16 migrants – 12 men, three women and a baby – and rescued 63 others who were on board a ship wrecked near the island of Paros. According to the survivors, nearly 80 migrants were on this boat.
This latest tragedy, the third since Wednesday, brings to at least thirty the number of migrants who perished this week while trying to reach Europe. The increase in these incidents worries the Greek authorities. “These days, the criminal activity of smugglers, who are indifferent to human life, has intensified, crowding dozens of people in distress, without life jackets, on boats that do not even meet the standards of basic security “, Ioánnis Plakiotákis, the Minister of Maritime Affairs, denounced late Friday. He also blamed neighboring Turkey, “Which leaves the smugglers to act with impunity”.
On Friday, the coast guard also intercepted another boat with 92 men and boys on board, which had run aground on the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula. Three suspected smugglers, who fled the boat on foot, were subsequently arrested.
Eleven bodies had already been recovered Thursday evening after the sinking of another boat with a hundred migrants on board, stranded the same day on an islet in southern Greece. Some 90 people, including 11 women and 27 children, had been rescued and evacuated on Friday morning from this islet located in the north of the Greek island of Antikythera.
“Dangerous journeys in search of safety”
On Wednesday, an inflatable boat carrying migrants off the island of Folegandros, also in southern Greece, capsized, killing at least three people. Thirteen people, mainly Iraqis, but also Syrians and Egyptians, had been rescued. “This shipwreck painfully reminds us that people continue to embark on perilous journeys in search of safety”, reacted Adriano Silvestri, the deputy representative of the UNHCR – the UN refugee agency – in Greece.
The UNHCR estimates that more than 2,500 people died or disappeared at sea while trying to reach Europe between January and November and the situation in Afghanistan raises fears of the arrival of a new wave of migrants, and therefore new tragedies.
Athens accuses Ankara of turning a blind eye to people attempting to cross into Greece, in violation of the March 2016 agreement, which provided for a real Turkish effort to limit migration from its territory in return for aid billion euros from the EU, while Turkey denies the accusations.
Update : update this Saturday at 12:10 of the results of the sinking.