The exact number of people on board the vessel when it sank remains unknown. The sea rescue nonprofit Alarm Phone said in a tweet Wednesday it had received distress alerts Tuesday from people on board who reported the ship was carrying some 750 passengers.
Greece’s coast guard and the rescue organization have presented timelines of the tragedy that are sometimes at odds: Greek officials recount multiple rejected aid offers from those contacted on the vessel, who were bent on reaching Italy at seemingly any cost, while Alarm Phone reported receiving pleas for help. With so many aboard, it’s possible authorities and aid organizations spoke to different people with divergent views on the best course of action.
A Greek coast guard official confirmed the death toll and said a large-scale search operation continued, more than 24 hours after the boat was first spotted in trouble. “We don’t have exactly the number of the persons who were on board,” said the official. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
According to the official, Italian authorities notified Greece that a fishing vessel was in distress in international waters Tuesday morning. Greek authorities say that when they were approached, those on board declined an offer of assistance but later requested help. The Washington Post could not verify the claim.
Alarm Phone said it had received a distress message around 9:35 a.m. local time Tuesday. The NGO spoke with people aboard the boat that afternoon, received their GPS position and alerted Greek authorities, European Union border agency Frontex and the Greece office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, according to a timeline the organization shared on Twitter.
By 5:20 p.m. Tuesday, Alarm Phone said, people on board had reported the captain had abandoned the vessel.
Forty-five minutes after midnight, the NGO made its last contact.
The Greek Shipping Ministry said it was repeatedly told by people on board Tuesday afternoon and evening that they wished to proceed to Italy and wanted only food and water, which two ships — a Maltese-flagged merchant vessel and a Greek ship — provided.
At around 1:40 a.m. Wednesday, a person on board the vessel carrying the migrants said the engine had malfunctioned, at which point a Greek rescue boat was dispatched. “Ten to fifteen minutes later the boat completely sank,” the Shipping Ministry said in a statement. “A number of passengers on the outer decks fell into the sea.”
Photographs from the Greek port of Kalamata, in the Peloponnese region, show survivors making their way off a rescue vessel to safety, where paramedics awaited them with stretchers and blankets.
In a separate rescue mission Wednesday, Greek authorities rescued 80 people off the coast of Crete after receiving a distress call from a boat carrying migrants.
Greece has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks for its heavy-handed approach to migrants seeking safety. Last month, Greece’s then-prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, launched an investigation into whether authorities had illegally deported a group of migrants from a Greek island to Turkey, the AP reported.
The probe followed the release of a video, first reported by the New York Times, appearing to show officials transporting a group of migrants from a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos to a waiting coast guard vessel, later to leave them on rafts at sea. The European Commission formally requested that Greek authorities investigate shortly afterward.
The journey across the Mediterranean is often dangerous for migrants, who crowd into unsafe vessels in efforts to escape war or poverty. Ongoing conflicts in Yemen and Syria, and economic collapse in Lebanon and Egypt, have driven migration. And asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa and countries as far away as Afghanistan and Bangladesh make long, circuitous treks to North Africa to embark on sea voyages.
The majority of those rescued or killed in this week’s shipwreck were from Egypt, Pakistan, Syria and the Palestinian territories, according to a spokesperson from the Greek coast guard.
Alarm Phone accused Greek authorities of trying to “justify their failure” to save the migrants Tuesday “by arguing that the people in distress had not wanted to be rescued to Greece.”
“People on the move know that thousands have been shot at, beaten, and abandoned at sea by these Greek forces,” the group wrote in a news release Wednesday. “It is due to systemic pushbacks that boats are trying to avoid Greece, navigating much longer routes, and risking lives at sea.”
The number of deaths last year on migration routes inside and from the Middle East and North Africa was the highest since 2017, according to U.N. data released this week.
According to the International Organization for Migration, 441 migrants died in the Central Mediterranean in the first quarter of 2023, making it the deadliest first quarter since 2017. The U.N. agency describes the sea corridor as the most perilous known migration route in the world. Since 2014, the United Nations has documented more than 20,000 migrant deaths in the Mediterranean as a whole.
In recent years, the route through the Central Mediterranean has becoming increasingly popular, E.U. officials noted. According to Frontex, nearly 80,700 irregular crossings were detected along the route in the first four months of the year — the highest since record-keeping began in 2009. It was the only route into Europe where the number of irregular crossings detected increased from 2022, officials reported in April.
In a tweet, UNHCR’s Greece office described the shipwreck as “heartbreaking” and “avoidable,” calling for states to do more. “We need more safe pathways for people forced to flee. They should not be left with impossible life-threatening choices,” it said.
Sarah Dadouch contributed to this report.