Greece’s coast guard said on Friday it responded to a ship that sank off the country’s southern coast, causing more than 500 migrants to drown, drawing criticism of Europe’s failure to prevent such tragedies.
Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou said both the coast guard and private boats had repeatedly offered to help the ship on Wednesday while it was in international waters over radio and loudspeaker but had been turned down.
Nikos Alexiou argued that any effort to tow the overcrowded trawler or transfer hundreds of reluctant people to nearby boats would have been too dangerous.
The spokesman also said that after accepting food from a merchant ship, the trawler’s passengers refused a rope from a second merchant ship “because they thought the whole process was a way to get them to Greece.”
The Greek authorities sent the first ship, the tanker Lucky Sailor, to give the migrants food and water.
The company that manages the tanker said on Friday that people on board “were very hesitant to receive any help and, upon any attempt to get closer, the ship began to maneuver away.”
Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Limited said in a statement that the people on the trawler were eventually persuaded to accept food.
In the third day of searches, patrol boats and a helicopter have capsized to comb the area of the Mediterranean Sea where the crowded fishing boat capsized on Wednesday, in what the UN migration agency said could be the second worst migrant shipwreck. , the deadliest in history. Recorded.
The deadliest reportedly occurred when a ship capsized off the Libyan coast en route to Italy in April 2015, killing around 1,100 people.
Source: TSF
