Greece’s Coast Guard said it had recovered the bodies of 17 migrants from a half-sunken boat off the island of Crete on Saturday evening, as well as two survivors, in what appeared to be Greece’s deadliest smuggling boat wreck in more than two years.
Greek authorities were alerted to the episode earlier Saturday by a Turkish cargo ship in the area, about 30 nautical miles off Crete’s southwestern coast, after the crew spotted a half-submerged boat with people in it, an official at Greece’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs said.
The initial announcement from the Coast Guard said 18 bodies had been recovered, but the official corrected this to 17, and said that the two survivors told officials that no one else was missing from the boat.
The toll is the highest since the sinking of a fishing trawler off southern Greece in June 2023, the Adriana, in which hundreds died — the country’s worst-ever shipwreck.
According to a text message sent to reporters, Greek authorities responded to the Turkish ship’s alert by launching an extensive search involving two Coast Guard vessels and a rescue helicopter, aided by a vessel and an aircraft from the European Union border agency, Frontex, along with three nearby ships.
But when rescuers arrived, they found most of the migrants already dead.
Much remained unclear Saturday evening, including what had caused the boat to sink. The ministry official declined to comment on reports in state media that the migrants died of hypothermia rather than drowning — the usual cause of death in such wrecks — saying the coroner would determine the cause. It could be difficult to determine where the migrants came from, as no wallets were found in the flooded boat, she added.
Saturday’s disaster came amid a broader hardening of Greece’s stance on migration. The country’s conservative government froze asylum applications over the summer after a spike in arrivals to Crete from Libya, with 2,000 people landing on the island in the first week of July. It then passed a law in September imposing prison terms on asylum seekers who remain in the country after their applications are rejected.
Arrivals to Crete along the route from Libya fell by nearly 50 percent after the summer crackdown, Greece’s migration minister, Thanos Plevris, said last week. But the numbers have been creeping up again in recent days.
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