No less than 11 individuals died within the southern Aegean Sea on Thursday after a ship carrying migrants struck an islet, the Greek authorities stated, the second lethal episode of people-smuggling off Greece’s shores this week.
About 90 individuals have been left stranded after Thursday’s crash of the migrant boat into the rocky islet off the Greek island of Antikythera, officers stated.
The authorities, alerted to the accident when the migrants known as the 112 European emergency quantity, despatched two vessels and a helicopter to the scene. However darkish and windy circumstances hindered the rescue effort, leaving unclear when the migrants might be pulled from the islet to security.
Elsewhere within the Aegean, rescue groups searched to no avail for added survivors from the wreck late Tuesday of a migrant boat off the island of Folegandros that left at the least three individuals lifeless and dozens unaccounted for. 13 individuals survived that crash.
The boat that sank Tuesday — carrying migrants initially from Iraq, Syria and Egypt — started its journey from Turkey, a important cease alongside the migration route. Authorities had but to interview survivors from Thursday’s crash to study their departure level.
And in a 3rd episode, reported by the Greek authorities on Friday, one other migrant vessel ran aground close to Gytheio, off the nation’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, on Thursday night.
There have been no reviews of any deaths from that collision, however the Greek coast guard stated it rescued 92 migrants, from Egypt and Syria, and arrested three suspected smugglers, all Turkish nationals.
The incidents come solely a month after 27 individuals died in an try and cross the English Channel to Britain from France — and in per week through which at the least 70 migrants drowned off the coast of Libya. One other 100 remained lacking after the crashes, Lana Wreikat, the performing particular consultant of UNICEF Libya, stated in a press release on Thursday.
The tragedies have underscored the dangers confronted by migrants embarking on perilous sea routes in a bid to flee battle or search higher lives.
Greece stays a key route for migrants and asylum seekers, although arrivals have dropped sharply in recent times, as have deaths at sea, because the peak of Europe’s refugee disaster in 2015 and 2016.
Normally, migrants boarding vessels in neighboring Turkey head to islands within the jap Aegean, that are nearer to the Turkish shoreline. Neither Antikythera nor Folegandros are on the route typically favored by human smugglers, suggesting that their techniques could be altering.