A boat with migrants capsized off the coast of Greece: hundreds of people are missing, dozens died

Boat with migrants capsized in southern Greece. Hundreds of people have gone missing, and the search for survivors continues. Writes about it CBS News.

Photo: IStock

Rescuers transferred the bodies of the dead migrants to refrigerated trucks. A large-scale search for possible survivors of the disaster continues. Hundreds of people are still missing. At least 79 bodies have been recovered after a fishing boat full of migrants trying to travel from Libya to Italy capsized and sank in deep waters off the coast of Greece.

104 passengers were rescued, including Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans and Palestinians. Mostly men, there are also eight minors, but authorities fear hundreds more could be trapped under the boat. If the assumptions are confirmed, then this will be one of the worst tragedies ever recorded in the central Mediterranean.

“The survivors are in a very difficult situation. They are in shock,” said Erasmia Rumana, head of the UN Refugee Agency delegation, after meeting the rescued migrants in a storage shed in the southern port of Kalamata.

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“They want to contact their families and let them know that they are all right, and also continue to ask about the missing. Many friends and relatives have disappeared,” she said.

Greece has declared three days of mourning and politicians have suspended campaigning for the June 25 general election. The prosecutor of the Supreme Court ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the deaths.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said she was "deeply saddened" by the tragedy and vowed to strengthen cooperation between the European Union and neighboring countries to try to continue fighting migrant smugglers.

But rights groups argue that this will force migrants and refugees to take longer and more dangerous routes to reach safer countries.

A search operation south of the Greek region of the Peloponnese failed to find more bodies or survivors overnight from Wednesday to Thursday (June 14-15).

“The chances of finding survivors are minimal,” said retired Greek coast guard admiral Nikos Spanos. “We have already seen old fishing boats like this from Libya: they are about 30 meters (100 feet) long and can carry 600-700 people when fully loaded. But they are not seaworthy at all. Simply put, they are floating coffins.”

Libya plunged into chaos after a 2011 uprising that toppled and killed autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. Human traffickers capitalized on the ensuing instability and made Libya one of the main points of departure for people trying to reach Europe on smugglers' boats.

In 2015, CBS News correspondent Holly Williams visited a hellish prison in Libya, where migrants who came to the country hoping to leave its shores were kept. Despite the well-known risks of the high seas, almost all the people Williams spoke to in prison said that when they were released they would risk again and try to reach European soil.

Coast Guard experts believe that the ship may have sunk on June 14 because it ran out of fuel or had problems with the engine, and the movement of passengers inside the ship caused it to list and, ultimately, to capsize.

An aerial photograph of the ship released by the Greek authorities before it sank shows crowds of people on deck. Most of them were without life jackets.

“We are witnessing one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean and the numbers announced by the authorities are simply appalling,” said Gianluca Rocco, head of the Greek office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency.

Since 2014, IOM has documented over 21 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean.

The Greek Coast Guard said Italian authorities had notified it of the trawler's presence in international waters. The ministry said attempts by Greek ships and merchant ships to help the boat were repeatedly rejected, with people on board insisting they wanted to continue on to Italy.

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29 survivors in southern Greece remain hospitalized, mostly with symptoms of hypothermia, while eight are being questioned by Coast Guard investigators. Government officials said the survivors would be moved to a migrant shelter near Athens.

The bodies of the dead have been moved to a mortuary outside of Athens, where DNA samples will be taken to begin the identification process. According to health officials, the embassies of the countries involved will provide assistance.

The site is close to the deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea, and depths of up to 17 feet (000 km) could thwart any attempt to find the wreck.

According to preliminary IOM data, there were up to 400 people on board. The activist network said it received a distress signal from a boat in the same area, whose passengers said it was carrying 750 people.

The deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean in living memory occurred on April 18, 2015, when an overcrowded fishing boat collided off the Libyan coast with a cargo ship trying to come to its rescue. Only 28 survived. Forensic experts concluded that there were initially 1100 people on board.

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