At least 79 people died in a serious boat accident southwest of Greece – their bodies could be recovered. However, pictures of the fishing boat hopelessly overcrowded with migrants, which were published in the Greek media in the evening, confirmed assumptions that there could have been 500 to 700 passengers. 104 people were rescued. The search for survivors should continue into the night, said the Greek coast guard.
The first pictures of the completely overcrowded boat came from the authorities just hours before it sank. They showed that up to 200 people were crammed on the deck of the rusted fishing cutter alone. Another tween deck and the hull can be made out. According to media reports, the 104 people rescued were all men. The other passengers, including, according to the survivors, pregnant women and many children, are said to have stayed below deck and had no chance of escaping to the outside when the boat sank quickly.
“People were crammed together on the deck of the ship, and we suspect the same for the interior,” said a coast guard spokesman for state broadcaster ERT. Greek President Ekaterini Sakellaropoulou, who traveled to the port city of Kalamata for the rescue work in the morning, said: “We will probably never know how many people were really on board.”
The accident boat was a steel fishing boat up to 30 meters long. According to the rescued, it had set sail from the Libyan city of Tobruk. Among the passengers were people from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt.
Help rejected by passing ships?
Italian authorities had already informed their Greek neighbors on Tuesday about a fully occupied fishing boat in the Greek search and rescue area. The authorities and passing freighters have repeatedly offered the passengers help by radio, said a spokesman for the Greek coast guard. However, they would have refused and stated that they wanted to continue to Italy.
The Coast Guard suspected panic on board as the cause of the accident. The boat was still observed after contact was made and suddenly abrupt movements were noticed, the spokesman said. Then the cutter capsized and sank quickly. It wasn’t the weather. It was said to be relatively quiet.
The accident site is near the deepest point in the Mediterranean, the so-called Calypso low, which extends around five kilometers to the sea floor. A salvage of the wreck should be as good as impossible.
UN warns of safety of escape routes
After the accident, the United Nations warned of the safety of escape routes. “This is another example of the need for member states to come together and create orderly, safe pathways for people forced to flee,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. “Countries of origin, countries of transit and countries of destination” would have to be involved in this process.
Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) also spoke to the broadcaster Welt-TV of the need for legal escape routes to Europe. “If you embark on such a journey across the sea, under such conditions, then you have to be very desperate.” It is therefore important to enable legal immigration “for those who want to work with us, for example”.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that she was deeply saddened by the many deaths and very concerned about the number of missing people. “We must continue to work with Member States and third countries to prevent such tragedies.”
Asylum procedures in the EU are to be significantly tightened
Just last week, after lengthy negotiations, the interior ministers of the EU states agreed that the asylum procedures in the EU should be significantly tightened because of the problems with illegal migration. Among other things, tougher treatment of migrants with no prospects of staying is now planned. In the future, asylum procedures are also to be processed at the external borders of the EU – in Greece, among other places. The agreement still has to be confirmed by the European Parliament.
Greece has massively tightened controls on its waters in recent years to ward off illegal migration. As a result, smugglers and migrants are increasingly choosing dangerous, long routes from Turkey and Middle Eastern countries south past Greece directly to Italy to reach the EU.
According to the UN, more than 20,000 migrants have died in the Mediterranean since 2014. In April 2015, more than 1,000 people lost their lives off the Libyan coast in what was probably the worst disaster in the Mediterranean to date.
