ATHENS: Five migr­ants drowned and 40 were missing after their wooden boat capsized off Greece’s southern island of Gavdos late on Friday night.

Thirty-nine men — most of them from Pakistan — were rescued by cargo vessels sailing in the area. They were transferred to the island of Crete, the Greek coastguard said.

Coastguard boats, merchant vessels, an Italian frigate and naval aircraft were searching the area since Greek authorities were alerted about the incident.

In separate incidents on Saturday, a Malta-flagged cargo vessel rescued 47 migrants from a boat sailing about 40 nautical miles off Gavdos, while a tanker rescued another 88 migrants 28 nautical miles off the tiny island in Greece’s south.

According to initial information, coastguard officials believe the boats had left together from Libya. Greece was a favoured gateway to the European Union for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015-2016, when nearly one million people landed on its islands, mostly via inflatable dinghies.

Incidents with migrant boats and shipwrecks off Crete and its tiny neighbour Gavdos, which are relatively isolated in the central Mediterranean, have increased over the past year.

Eighty-two migrants were confirmed dead in June last year when an overcrowded vessel carrying over 700 people capsized and sank in international waters off the south-western Greek coastal town of Pylos. But Greek authorities estimate that over 500 people had drowned since they remain unaccounted for to this day.

Over 200 migrants of the 500 presumed dead were Pakistanis.

It was one of the deadliest boat disasters ever in the Mediterranean Sea.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2024