Huge search seeks survivors of migrant boat sinking off Greece; hundreds feared missing
With its human cargo of migrants filling every available space, the battered blue trawler was about halfway from Libya to Italy when its engine cut out in the night.
The vessel wobbled sharply, flooded and capsized. Less than 15 minutes later, it sank into one of the Mediterranean‘s deepest points, off the coast of Greece. Hundreds of people are thought to have been on board when the boat went down Wednesday, although authorities have no precise figure.
Rescuers saved 104 passengers — including Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans and Palestinians — and recovered 79 bodies. And the search went on early Thursday for more, with aircraft dropping flares to help search teams.
“It’s one of the biggest (such) operations ever in the Mediterranean,” Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told state ERT TV. “We won’t stop looking.”
The sinking could be one of the worst ever recorded on the feared central Mediterranean migration route, which is the world’s deadliest.
Ioannis Zafiropoulos, deputy mayor of the southern port city of Kalamata, where survivors were taken, said his information indicated there were “more than 500 people” on board.
The 25- to 30-meter (80- to 100-foot) boat is believed to have left the Tobruk area in Libya, which was plunged into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi. The instability allowed migrant smugglers to make Libya one of the main departure points for people seeking a better life in Europe.
Migration experts linked the sinking with the European Union’s failure to provide safe immigration alternatives for people fleeing conflict or hardship in the Middle East and Africa.
“We are witnessing one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean, and the numbers announced by the authorities are devastating,” said Gianluca Rocco, head of the Greek section of IOM, the U.N. migration agency.
“This situation reinforces the urgency for concrete, comprehensive action from states to save lives at sea and reduce perilous journeys by expanding safe and regular pathways to migration,” Rocco said.
The IOM has recorded more than 21,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said the bloc has “a collective moral duty” to dismantle migrant smuggling networks.
“The best way to ensure safety of migrants is to prevent these catastrophic journeys and invest in legal pathways,” she wrote on Twitter.
Greece’s coast guard said it was notified by Italian authorities of the trawler’s presence in international waters. It said in a statement that efforts by its own ships and merchant vessels to assist the boat were repeatedly rebuffed, with people on board insisting they wanted to continue to Italy.
“They categorically refused any help,” Alexiou said.
An aerial photograph of the vessel released by the coast guard showed scores of people covering practically every inch of deck. Greek media reports, which said the ship had been at sea for least two days, voiced fears that women and children may have been trapped in the hold.
“The outer deck was full of people, and we presume that the interior (of the vessel) would also have been full,” Alexiou said. “It looks as if there was a shift among the people who were crammed on board, and it capsized.”
The spot is close to the deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea, and depths of up to 17,000 feet (5,200 meters) could hamper any effort to locate a sunken vessel.
Greece’s caretaker prime minister, Ioannis Sarmas, declared three days of national mourning.
