At least 79 migrants have drowned and hundreds more remain missing and feared dead after their battered and overloaded boat capsized off the coast of Greece. Just over 100 migrants have been rescued and a massive operation to find more continues. The events have raise the question, though, of whether the tragedy, the worst in recent years, could have been averted.
Six coast guard vessels, a military helicopter and a navy frigate continue to comb the site of the tragedy, some 50 miles south of Pylos, in southeast Greece. Hopes though are fading.
So far, 104 migrants have been rescued, all of them men, the majority from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories.
It remains unclear how many people were on board the battered 30-meter fishing boat but initial accounts from survivors put the number as high as 750. Worse yet, 100 of them, apparently women and children, were said to have been kept below deck, where smugglers are known to keep them locked in perilous journeys to the West.
The causes of the tragedy are being investigated but on Thursday authorities here said the boat was left drifting across the Mediterranean shortly after it set sail from Libya, bound for Italy.
“At some point, in the early phase of the journey, the boat lost its engine,” Nikos Alexiou, a spokesman for the Greek coast guard said. “Because it was overloaded, movement of people on deck appears to have caused it to tip over and capsize.”
Alexiou said the coast guard made several attempts to contact and approach the vessel before the tragedy, but he said any and every bid was rebuffed.
“They even refused food and aid offered by commercial vessels that sped to assist them before we got there,” he said. “That’s how headstrong they were in their bid to reach Italy.”
Since coming to power four years ago, the conservative Greek government of Kyriakos Mitstotakis has enforced tighter migration controls.
Alexiou dismissed allegations that the tragedy could have been averted.
“Had we forcibly intervened and tried to haul the vessel to safe waters, an even greater tragedy would have followed,” he said.
Greece, he said, would have then been blamed for causing the tragedy.
Instead, Alexiou said, the Greek coast guard opted to watch and if they had not been close enough to act as fast as they did, he said, the tragedy might have been worse, with the number of survivors, significantly lower.
European Union officials have expressed sadness, as they put it, over the tragedy, and called for a more united strategy to combat migrant smuggling. Human rights groups say the crackdown would simply force more migrants to seek more perilous routes to reach the West.
The United Nations says more than 70,000 migrants have arrived so far in Europe’s front-line Mediterranean countries – Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus – this year.
Nearly 1,000 people are estimated to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean so far this year.
