Greek authorities on Thursday arrested 12 men accused of human trafficking and linked to the sinking on Wednesday of a fishing boat carrying more than 750 people, including 210 children, admitting that more than 600 migrants may have died.
According to the Greek press, all the detainees were identified as Egyptian citizens by several of the little more than 100 migrants who were rescued and who each paid between four thousand and six thousand dollars (3,660 and 5,490 euros) for the trip, which began in Tobruk, in eastern Libya and bound for Italy.
A doctor who treated most of the 105 migrants rescued in Kalamata told the BBC on Thursday that the death toll from the shipwreck, which occurred in one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean, could reach 600.
“Some of those rescued told me that the boat was carrying around 750 people and it is possible that 600 of them died,” Manolis Makaris told the BBC.
So far 78 bodies have been recovered.
Greek authorities continue to say they do not know the number of people on board the fishing boat, which sank 47 nautical miles (about 87 kilometers) southwest of the Peloponnese region of southern Greece.
The possibility of finding survivors is becoming increasingly unlikely, at a time when the Greek Coast Guard is seeing growing criticism for not having acted as it should to prevent the tragedy.
In statements to the Spanish news agency EFE, the spokesman for the Greek Coast Guard, Nikos Alexiu, stressed that the weather conditions in the area of the incident on Wednesday had worsened in recent hours and strong winds made search and rescue operations difficult. .
Eight vessels, including a navy ship and a helicopter, continue to operate southwest of the Peloponnese peninsula, where the vessel sank.
According to local media, there could be between 500 and 700 migrants on board the 30-meter boat, including many women and children, most of whom were in the ship’s hold.
All those rescued are adult men from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, who were brought to the Greek port city of Kalamata.
It is in Kalamata that the rescued people and even the relatives of the people on board who arrived from abroad search for their loved ones, showing photos on their cell phones.
Meanwhile, the media and international organizations, as well as several non-governmental organizations, accuse the Greek Coast Guard of not having made the best decisions to avoid what could be one of the greatest migratory tragedies in the history of the Mediterranean.
According to the Greek authorities, the Coast Guard had detected on Tuesday that the overloaded vessel was sailing in international waters south of the Peloponnese.
The Coast Guard repeatedly offered fishing assistance via satellite phone and private boats were dispatched to the area, but the suspected criminals on board refused the offer of assistance, expressing a desire to continue the voyage to Italy.
“The ship was not seaworthy and it didn’t matter what some people on board said,” Vincent Cochetel, special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Western and Central Mediterranean, said on Thursday.
Alarm Phone, an activist network that runs a hotline for migrant boats in distress, said in a statement that it had informed Greek authorities on Tuesday that the boat was in distress.
Survivors reported that the captain had left the boat in a small boat before it capsized, activists said.
Source: TSF
