ATHENS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Greece retrieved the bodies of 13 migrants along with 18 survivors from a boat that had been spotted by a container ship off the island of Crete early on Monday, its coast guard said.
The Morocco-flagged container ship spotted the boat about 15 nautical miles (28 km) off the port of Kaloi Limenes on Crete. The coast guard said it had taken the survivors and the dead to shore and that one of four people taken to hospital had later died there.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the deaths of the 13 migrants on board but Greek authorities said the boat may have been at sea for days, struggling to reach the shore due to strong winds.
“We found them (the survivors) shivering from the cold,” said a local coast guard official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Reuters photo showed a body wrapped in a black bag being taken ashore at the port of Agia Galini.
The four survivors taken to hospital included a toddler, a second coast guard official told Reuters, adding that the other survivors would be taken to a migrant facility on Crete.
Greece, long a favoured gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, was on the front line of Europe’s migration crisis in 2015-2016 when nearly 1 million people landed on its islands, mainly from Turkey.
Total migrant arrivals have since ebbed as Athens has bolstered sea and border patrols. But arrivals from Libya of migrants — mostly fleeing conflicts in Sudan and Bangladesh — have surged in recent years.
The coast guard rescued another 187 migrants in three other incidents off Crete on Monday.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou and Angeliki Koutantou; Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Thomas Derpinghaus and Gareth Jones)
