ATHENS: At least 18 people, utmost of them women, failed when their vessel sank off the Greek islet of Lesbos beforehand on Thursday, the country’s coastguard said, in the alternate maritime disaster involving settlers in the Aegean Sea in under a day.
The boat was carrying about 40 people, authorities said, citing people who had been saved so far. Eighteen bodies were recovered, including a man and a boy, and 25 other people were saved. The hunt for survivors was continuing under adverse rainfall conditions, the seacoast guard said.
The boat sank east of Lesbos, which lies near to Turkey’s Aegean seacoast.
“Strong winds blowing in the area are making our work delicate,” seacoast guard spokesperson Nikos Kokkalas told state television ERT before on Thursday.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, speaking from Prague as he arrived for the initial peak of the European Political Community, prompted Europe to “work together, in a much more meaningful way,” to help similar incidents.
“And to fully neutralise the merchandisers who are exploiting innocent people, hopeless people, who are trying to reach the European mainland on boats that are easily not seaworthy,” he said.
Greek authorities had on Wednesday saved 80 settlers — among them 18 minors — whose boat sank in stormy waters near the islet of Kythira in southern Greece.
On Thursday, Shipping Minister Ioannis Plakiotakis said Turkey wasn’t precluding mortal merchandisers from exploiting settlers and prompted it to admire a 2016 deal with the European Union to keep deportees and settlers down from Europe.
“As long as the Turkish seacoast guard doesn’t help their conduct, merchandisers will pile unfortunate people, without safety measures, into boats that can not repel the rainfall conditions,” he said.
Turkey says it has ramped up measures to help people smuggling.
