Athens: On Tuesday, amid the ferocious gusts southwest of Crete, Greece’s coastguard was saving a fishing boat carrying up to 500 migrants, an AFP spokesperson said. A coastguard spokesperson told AFP that the effort had been delayed by conditions that were nearly gale-force. ‘The distress call claimed there are 400-500 passengers on board,’ she said.
She said, ‘They can see the boat, it’s drifting, and there are many people on board. The distress call was made on Monday just after midnight, according to the coast guard’. According to the report, assistance was being provided by two adjacent cargo ships, a tanker, and two Italian fishing boats.
Migrant smugglers are increasingly using the longer and riskier route south of Crete, according to Greek officials, as a result of increased patrols by the Greek coastguard and EU border agency Frontex in the Aegean Sea. Notis Mitarachi, the minister of migration, stated on Skai TV last week that ‘80% of flows from Turkey travel straight to Italy’.
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