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A boat, leaving Libya with 750 people on board, ran aground off Greece on the night of Tuesday June 13 to Wednesday June 14. At least 78 of them drowned. Greece is facing one of the worst migrant shipwrecks it has known and has declared three days of national mourning.
In two photos taken by the Greek Coast Guard, we see the ship before it sank, the bridge literally crowded. During the night of Wednesday June 14 to Thursday June 15, the coastguards brought back new corpses. It is currently impossible to say how many migrants lost their lives in the tragedy, and we will probably never know precisely. So far, 104 people have been rescued and brought back to dock in Greece.
The boat would have refused any help
78 people are officially dead and hundreds more are still missing. The boat was, it seems, left the Libyan coast on Friday, before sinking off the Greek coast in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, in troubled circumstances. Could the migrants have been rescued before the sinking? A plane from Frontex, the European border surveillance agency, flew over the boat on Tuesday noon, but the boat would have refused its help according to the Greek authorities.