A shipwreck in the early hours of Wednesday 14th June, off the coast of Pylos in the western Peloponnese, is likely to prove one of the most fatal incidents to date involving immigrants in the Mediterranean. So far, 78 bodies have been recovered while another 104 people have been saved, but a much larger number remain unaccounted for.
Seen from the air, the fishing boat carrying immigrants from Libya which sank on Tuesday night off the coast of the Western Peloponnese. The Calypso Deep, where the sinking took place, is the deepest part of the Mediterranean. The boat sank in water 4,000 metres deep, making recovery of any bodies other than those already found extremely unlikely.
According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, the 30-metre fishing vessel, which is thought to have departed from Tobruk in Libya, was carrying at least 400 passengers. However, the head of the local branch of the Coastguard, Rear Admiral Tryfonas Kontzias, told a reporter from ERT Kalamata that the survivors had mentioned a figure of 700 immigrants travelling on the ship
A major search and rescue operation is under way, with patrol boats, a Coastguard rescue boat, a naval frigate, seven ships which were sailing in the area, a naval helicopter and a FRONTEX drone. Three people have been taken to the Coastguard office at Kalamata for interrogation. A team of specialists in identifying disaster victims is travelling to Kalamata, while forensic examiners are coming from Athens to carry out autopsies.
The timeline
The fishing boat Adriana was identified at midday on Tuesday. It had showed up on the radar of a FRONTEX drone and two passing ships in international waters, heading north from the African coast towards the Adriatic. There was communication with the Coastguard’s search and rescue vessel but the fishing boat did not ask for assistance at that point either from the Italian or from the Greek authorities, nor did it mention any problems or the number of passengers.
Late in the afternoon, the ship seemed to change course continually and to be travelling slowly while on the open sea, but when contacted again it still did not ask for assistance. Later, a cargo ship approached it and gave those on board food and water, since they appeared to have been at sea without provisions for 4 days. In the evening a Coastguard vessel approached and started to follow it, until it was 46-47 nautical miles off the Greek coast.
The weather conditions up to the point of the sinking were good, but the boat was so heavily loaded that it would have encountered problems even if there were no wind. Of the hundreds of passengers on the ship, most of them seem to have been on the decks. It has yet to be established how many were inside. Finally, at around 2.00 in the morning, the ship overturned, for reasons which were not clear but were most likely caused by passenger movements, and sank some 15 minutes later.
The Greek Coastguard, which was already on the alert, hurried to the spot, by agreement with the Italian Rescue Centre, which was the source which had originally informed the Greeks that a ship in the area was in danger. Two Coastguard vessels, three passing ships and a Hercules C-130 military transport aircraft joined the operation.
Following intensive efforts in the dark, they succeeded in rescuing 104 people. The search is continuing, although there is little hope of finding any more survivors after so many hours. A warehouse at Kalamata has been been turned into a reception centre for the survivors. Twenty-four of them were taken to the Kalamata General Hospital.
Officialdom reacts
The provisional government under Prime Minister Ioannis Sarmas has pronounced a 3-day period of mourning for the victims. The head of the Heraklion-based 7th Public Health Region, Giannis Karvelis, and the head of the Emergency Services Nikos Papaevstathiou are now in Kalamata, and work on identifying the victims through DNA testing will get under way as soon as the specialised teams arrive.
Both Kyriakos Mitsotakis and and Alexis Tsipras cancelled their speaking engagements on Wednesday night, while representatives of the three main parties – Nea Dimokratia, SYRIZA and PASOK – as well as the KKE leader Dimitris Koutsoubas were reported to be on their way to Kalamata. The President of the Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou also visited the immigrants’ reception centre on Wednesday afternoon.
(Haniotika Nea, 14/06/23)
According to the International Organisation for Migration almost 3,800 people have died in the past year on the immigrant routes from the Near East and North Africa, accounting for half of all deaths on migrant routes worldwide. Of these 3,800 deaths, 2,761 took place at sea.