Twenty-nine people were rescued by the Greek Coast Guard on Wednesday morning.
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“Up to 50 people are missing” in the sinking of a migrant boat off the Greek island of Karpathos, in the Aegean Sea, announced a Greek coastguard official on Wednesday August 10. “Twenty-nine people, Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians, were saved”, she clarified. The wrecked boat had sailed from the Turkish city of Antalya and was destined for Italy.
Four boats sailing in the area of the sinking, two coastguard patrol boats and an air force helicopter participated in the search for the missing on Wednesday morning. But operations were hampered by strong winds of 40 to 50 km/h (7 on the Beaufort scale), another coastguard spokesman said, stressing that “many castaways were not wearing life jackets”.
The perilous crossing of the few nautical miles that separate the Greek islands and the Turkish coasts in the Aegean Sea costs the lives of many migrants and refugees who try to cross to Europe on board makeshift boats. Since January 2022, 64 people have perished in the eastern Mediterranean, including eight in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Mykonos, which occurred on June 19. In 2021, the number of migrants attempting to cross this area was 111, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).