Rescuers have launched the third and final day of their search for survivors of one of the Mediterranean’s worst boat disasters, as authorities detained nine suspected people-smugglers and criticism of Greece’s initial response mounted.
The Greek coastguard said on Friday a helicopter, a frigate and three smaller vessels were searching waters 50 miles (80 km) from the southern town of Pylos where the fishing boat, reportedly carrying between 400 and 750 people, sank on Wednesday.
Greek authorities have confirmed 78 deaths and said 104 survivors – mostly from Syria, Egypt and Pakistan – have been brought ashore, but police believe as many as 500 are missing, with witnesses saying up to 100 children were in the ship’s hold.
Most of the survivors were being moved to shelters near Athens from a warehouse at the southern port of Kalamata. No more had been found since Wednesday and officials said the search would be halted later on Friday.
“Hopes of finding survivors are fading each minute after this tragic sinking but the search must continue,” said Stella Nanou of the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. She said broadcast images and survivor accounts suggested “hundreds were aboard”.
The UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, on Friday called the disaster “a horrific tragedy”, adding that the loss of life underlined the need to bring people-smugglers to justice and calling on states to open up more regular migration channels.
Authorities were holding nine of the survivors, all men of Egyptian descent, ranging in age from 20 to 40, on allegations of people-smuggling and participating in a criminal enterprise.
Arrested on Thursday night, they are suspected of masterminding the illegal voyage to Italy from Tobruk in Libya, after first setting out from Egypt with the fishing trawler. “They are in custody and will appear before a local magistrate,” Nikos Alexiou, the Hellenic coastguard spokesperson, told the Guardian.
A public prosecutor is likely to press several charges against the group including mass murder. There were conflicting reports about whether the ship’s captain was among those arrested, with some local media saying he had died when the vessel went down.
Greek authorities were criticised for not acting earlier, despite a coastguard vessel escorting the boat for hours. Officials said people on the boat repeatedly refused assistance and insisted on continuing to Italy, but legal experts said that was no excuse.
The Greek coastguard said it was notified of the boat’s presence late on Tuesday morning and observed by helicopter that it was “sailing on a steady course” at 6pm. A little later, someone on the boat was reached by satellite phone.
The person said that the passengers needed food and water, but wanted to continue to Italy. “It was a fishing boat packed with people who refused our assistance because they wanted to go to Italy,” Alexiou told Skai TV.
“We stayed beside it in case it needed our assistance, which they had refused.” Merchant ships delivered supplies and observed the vessel until early on Wednesday morning, when the satellite phone user reported a problem with the engine.
About 40 minutes later, according to a coastguard statement, the boat began to rock violently and sank. Coastguard experts believe it may have run out of fuel or had engine trouble and that passengers moving inside caused it to list and capsize.
Greece’s caretaker minister for civil protection, Evangelos Tournas, said the coastguard could not intervene in international waters with a vessel refusing assistance. “An intervention by the coastguard could have placed an overloaded vessel in danger, which could capsize as a result,” he said.
However, Prof Erik Røsæg of the University of Oslo’s Institute of Private Law said maritime law would have required Greek authorities to attempt a rescue if the boat was unsafe, regardless of whether those onboard requested it.
Greek authorities “had a duty to start rescue procedures” given the condition of the trawler, Røsæg told Associated Press, adding that a captain’s refusal of assistance could be overruled if deemed unreasonable – which he said this appeared to be.
An independent refugee activist, Nawal Soufi, said in a Facebook post that she had been in touch with the boat throughout Tuesday and in the last call, “the man I was talking to expressly told me: ‘I feel that this will be our last night alive.’”
Aerial pictures released by Greek authorities of the boat hours before it sank showed dozens of people on the boat’s upper and lower decks looking up, some with arms outstretched.
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Vessel left Tobruk in Libya early in the morning, Greek sources tell Reuters
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Greek coastguard alerted to the presence of the vessel 47 nautical miles (87 km) south-west of country
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Advocacy group Alarm Phone says it received its first call from the boat to say it was in distress. Greek authorities had also established contact with the vessel
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Greek authorities who were in repeated communication with the boat say people on the vessel told them they wanted to sail to Italy and wanted no assistance from Greece
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Food and water supplied by commercial vessel
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Alarm Phone says passengers told it the boat was not moving
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Greek coastguard says observation from helicopter showed boat was sailing ‘on steady course’
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Greek coastguard says it threw rope to crew
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Engine failure reported
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Boat overturned and sank
Under its recent conservative government, Greece has taken a far harder stance on migration, building walled camps and boosting border controls. The country is currently governed by a caretaker administration pending an election on 25 June.
Human rights groups say an EU crackdown on smuggling has forced people to take longer, more dangerous routes. Eftychia Georgiadi of the International Rescue Committee charity said the bloc had failed to offer more safe pathways to migration.
That “effectively slams the door on people seeking protection”, Georgiadi said. “Nobody embarks on these treacherous journeys unless they feel they have no other option,” she added.
On Thursday evening, thousands of protesters rallied in Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki, demanding EU migration policies be eased to prevent another tragedy. A group of protesters in the capital threw petrol bombs at police.
Alexis Tsipras, who was prime minister from 2015-2019 at the peak of Europe’s migration crisis, said on Thursday: “The immigration policy that Europe has been following for years … turns the Mediterranean, our seas, into watery graves.”
Tsipras, now an opposition leader, said: “What sort of protocol does not call for the rescue … of an overloaded boat about to sink?”
Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
