- At least 16 refugees were killed on Friday when their boat wrecked off the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea.
- It is already the third such incident this Christmas week, the Greek Coast Guard announced.
- Small boats carrying migrants also arrived in Italy, and hundreds of people were picked up in wooden boats by private sea rescue organizations.
According to Greek state television, a boat with 82 people on board capsized off the island of Paros. According to preliminary information, the Coast Guard managed to rescue 41 migrants from the Aegean Sea. She added that fishermen from the island and boats from the coast guard participated in the rescue operation in the dark. The boat was on its way from Turkey to Italy.
The Greek authorities had announced earlier that 11 bodies had been found after another refugee boat sank northwest of Crete. 90 people, including 27 minors, were rescued after their sailing boat sank off the island of Antikythera in southern Greece on Thursday.
Boats capsize and sink every day
Police arrested another 92 immigrants in the southern Peloponnese peninsula on Friday afternoon. Her sailboat went crazy near the port of the small town of Jethion. The Coast Guard announced the arrest of three suspected smugglers.
On Wednesday night, a boat sank off the island of Folegandros, which is believed to have up to 50 people on board. Dozens of people are still missing. Three people were found dead.
Greek Shipping Minister Giannis Plakiotakis said locomotive gangs were to blame for the disasters. They don’t care about people’s lives. They forced dozens of people without life jackets to board boats that did not meet even basic safety standards.
Boats also arrive in Lecce
Also in Italy, two boats carrying migrants arrived within 24 hours. According to ANSA, a sailboat with 74 people on board arrived in Santa Maria di Luca, the “heel of the boot” in Italy’s southernmost point near Lecce, in the afternoon. There were also 25 unaccompanied minors and three women on board, the majority from Afghanistan.
The Financial Police Guardia di Finanza also identified two suspected smugglers on the boat. 154 migrants have already arrived in Santa Maria de Luca on Friday afternoon.
Thousands are stranded in Italy
Migrants attempt to reach from the Turkish Aegean coast or from other countries in the eastern Mediterranean to the Greek mainland or Italy. Greek coast guard officers estimated that about 11,000 people had come to Italy in this way in the past few months.
In the past few days, many migrants have also arrived on the island of Lampedusa and Sardinia in the western Mediterranean. The Italian Ministry of the Interior has registered more than 64,600 migrants who arrived in Italy by boat on Friday this year. In the previous year there were about 34,100 people.
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