Athens (EFE).- This Friday the search for possible survivors continues after the sinking of a ship with immigrants off the coast of Greece, although the hope of finding more castaways alive in a tragedy that may have left hundreds of dead is fading .
“At this point, it is extremely difficult for someone to be found alive,” a Coast Guard spokeswoman told EFE.
The operations continued throughout the night without yielding any results, so the official balance remains that of at least 78 dead and 104 rescued, all male, including eight minors.
According to some local media, between 500 and 700 immigrants were traveling aboard the 30-meter-long boat.
One hundred minors on board
Currently, five vessels, including a Navy frigate and a helicopter, continue operations in the area, which are hampered by strong winds.
According to the testimonies of those rescued collected by the Greek media, the boat had departed from Egypt, stopped in eastern Libya and then continued on to Italy.
Early Wednesday morning it sank southwest of the Greek Peloponnese peninsula after capsizing.
Some survivors have told local media that there were around 100 children and many women in the hold of the old fishing boat.
Nine Egyptians arrested for alleged human trafficking
Authorities detained nine Egyptian nationals among those rescued yesterday, who face charges of forming a criminal organization for the smuggling of immigrants, causing a shipwreck and endangering lives.
The rest of the rescued are being transferred from the Peloponnese port city of Kalamata to the Malakasa reception camp outside Athens to be identified.
The eight minors will then be transferred to state centers for children, according to the local press.
The Greek Coast Guard was severely criticized yesterday by the media and international organizations, as well as by NGOs, for not intervening from the first moment it spotted the overloaded vessel on Tuesday.
According to Nikos Alexíu, a spokesman for the coast guard, on Skai private television, “A sudden intervention to rescue a ship with so many people could produce a sudden change of cargo, which would cause the ship to sink.”
“We stayed close in case they needed us to save them and that’s what we did,” he stressed.
This Thursday, thousands of people demonstrated throughout Greece in protest of the migration policies of the European Union and the Greek governments, which, according to their complaints, have turned the bloc into a “fortress” and the Mediterranean into “a sea of the dead”. .