KALAMATA: Greek rescuers on Thursday scoured the Ionian Sea for survivors a day after a fishing boat overloaded with migrants capsized and sank, killing at least 78 people, with fears that the toll could eventually run into the hundreds.

As relatives in the migrants’ home countries frantically sought details of their loved ones, the coastguard said 78 bodies had been recovered and 104 people saved from the sea so far.

But hundreds more may be missing, judging from the testimony from survivors and the fact that no women and children have yet been rescued.

“This could be the worst maritime tragedy in Greece in recent years,” Stella Nanou of the UNHCR refugee agency told state broadcaster ERT.

One survivor told hospital doctors in Kalamata that he had seen a hundred children in the boat’s hold, ERT reported. “It’s really horrific,” UNHCR staffer Erasmia Roumana said at the port of Kalamata.

Photographs handed out by the coastguard showed a rusty blue boat with scores of people crammed on deck.

“It was like an abandoned ship... we saw no lifesavers or lifejackets either on (the migrants) or the boat,” local rescuer Constantinos Vlachonikolos told state radio.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before.” Two patrol boats, a navy frigate, three helicopters and nine other ships were searching the waters west of the Peloponnese peninsula, one of the deepest parts of the Medi­terranean, a coastguard spokeswoman said.

Questions over rescue

The coastguard said a surveillance plane with Europe’s Frontex agency had spotted the boat on Tuesday afternoon, but that the passengers had “refused any help”.

The boat’s engine gave up shortly before 2300 GMT on Tuesday and the vessel later capsized, Siakantaris said, sinking in around 10 to 15 minutes.

Alexiou, the coastguard spokesman, suggested that the boat might have capsized earlier if the coastguard had attempted to intervene.

“You cannot divert a boat with so many people on board by force unless there is cooperation,” he said. It was “fortunate” that rescue ships were nearby or more lives would have been lost, he added.

But leftist former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who spoke to survivors at the port, said they had “called for help”. “What sort of protocol does not call for the rescue... of an overloaded boat about to sink?” he asked.

The head of Frontex, Hans Leijtens, arrived in Greece on Thursday “to better understand what happened since Frontext played a part”.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2023