ATHENS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Fourteen migrants died in an attempt to reach the island of Crete by boat, Greece’s coastguard said on Monday, in the second deadly incident in the area in recent days.
A Morocco-flagged container ship spotted their boat on Monday about 15 nautical miles (28 km) off the port of Kaloi Limenes. Thirteen migrants were found dead and another died later in hospital, the coastguard said. Eighteen people survived.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the deaths. Greek authorities said the boat may have been at sea for days, struggling to reach the shore due to strong winds.
“We found them (the survivors) shivering from the cold,” said a local coastguard official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The incident comes after another on Saturday off Crete in which the coastguard retrieved eight bodies and rescued 28 migrants from Sudan, the coastguard said. In three other incidents on Monday, the coast guard rescued another 187 migrants.
On Monday, a Reuters photo showed a body wrapped in a black bag being taken ashore at the port of Agia Galini.
Four of the survivors were taken to hospital on Monday, including a toddler. The other survivors were taken to a migrant facility on Crete, the coastguard said.
Greece, long a favoured gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, was on the front line of Europe’s migration crisis in 2015-2016 when nearly 1 million people landed on its islands, mainly from Turkey.
Total migrant arrivals have since ebbed as Athens has bolstered sea and border patrols. But arrivals from Libya of migrants — mostly fleeing violence in Sudan and Bangladesh — have surged in recent years.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Angeliki Koutantou; Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas and Emma Farge; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Thomas Derpinghaus, Gareth Jones and Sharon Singleton)
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