Greece searches the site of the shipwreck; Hundreds fear they will drown in the hold of the boat

KALAMATA, Greece (Reuters) – Rescuers patrolled the seas off Greece on Thursday in the wake of a shipwreck that claimed the lives of at least 79 migrants, with survivors’ hopes fading and fears mounting that hundreds more, including children, could drown. ship’s hold.

Reports indicated that between 400 and 750 people had packed the fishing boat, which capsized and sank early Wednesday morning in deep waters 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos. Greek authorities said 104 survivors were brought ashore.

As it began to falter late Tuesday night, people on the ship’s crowded exterior repeatedly refused to attempt assistance from a Greek coast guard boat watching it, saying they wanted to get to Italy, according to Greek authorities.

“When you are faced with such a situation … you have to be very careful in your actions,” coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told state broadcaster ERT.

“You couldn’t do a violent conversion on such a ship with so many people on board… without any kind of co-operation.”

Greece declared three days of mourning, and the authorities said it was not clear how many people were on board. They were investigating an account from a European rescue support charity that there could have been 750 people on a boat between 20 and 30 meters (65 to 100 ft) long.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration said initial reports indicated there were up to 400 people on board.

Citing initial testimonies from survivors, the charity Save the Children said around 100 children were believed to be in the ship’s hold.

“(EU) member states have gone to extraordinary lengths to close all routes to children and their families seeking safety in Europe. Often their only option is to take dangerous boat journeys,” said Daniel Gorivan, senior advocacy adviser at the charity.

“The fact that people are still dying in the Mediterranean should be a wake-up call for EU governments,” he said, warning that the Mediterranean risked becoming “the deadliest migration route in the world”.

Of the 104 survivors so far taken by the coast guard to the Greek port city of Kalamata, authorities said most of them were men. They revised the overnight death toll to 78 from 79.

Our last night alive

On Thursday, the bodies of the victims were taken to a cemetery near Athens for DNA tests. The Coast Guard said the search would continue for as long as needed.

Government sources said that the chances of recovering the sunken ship that took off from the Libyan port of Tobruk are remote, because the international waters area in which the accident occurred is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.

Aerial photos released by the Greek coast guard showed dozens of people on the upper and lower decks of the boat looking up, some with outstretched arms, hours before it sank.

Alarm Fone, which operates a trans-European network supporting rescue operations, said it received alerts from people on a ship in distress off Greece late on Tuesday.

She said she alerted Greek authorities and spoke to people on board who estimated there were up to 750 people on board pleading for help, and that the captain had fled on a small boat.

Before the ship capsized and sank around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, government officials said, the ship’s engine stopped and it began to yaw from side to side.

Independent refugee activist Nawal Sofi said in a Facebook post that migrants had contacted her on the ship in the early hours of Tuesday, and that she had been in contact with them until 11 p.m.

“All the while they asked me what they should do and I kept telling them that Greek help would come. On this last call, the man I was talking to said bluntly to me: ‘I feel like this is going to be our last night alive,'” she wrote.

Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

With a conservative government in power until last month, Greece has taken a tougher stance on migration, setting up walled camps and strengthening border control.

The country is currently governed by a caretaker administration pending elections on June 25.

Libya, which has had little stability or security since the NATO-backed uprising in 2011, is a major staging post for those seeking to reach Europe by sea, and people-smuggling networks mainly run by the military factions that control the territories. coastal.

The United Nations has recorded more than 20,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014, making it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world.

Additional reporting by Stelios Messinas in Kalamata, Lefteris Papadimas, Rene Maltizo and Carolina Tagaris in Athens, Angelo Amanti in Rome; Written by Michel Cambas; Editing by John Stonestreet and Hugh Lawson

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.