Following the sinking of two boats in Greek waters, which resulted in at least 21 fatalities and many more still missing, locals of a Greek island performed daring rescues by hauling migrants who had been stranded to safety up sheer cliffs.
A dinghy carrying around 40 passengers sank, leaving 16 young African women and one young male dead, according to the coast guard on Lesbos, an island in the eastern Mediterranean. According to coast guard personnel, ten women were saved while 13 other migrants were thought to be missing.
A sailboat carrying about 100 migrants also capsized late Wednesday on the island of Kythira, several hundred kilometres to the west (local time).
After that boat ran aground near the east coast of the island’s tiny port of Diakofti, authorities reported that 30 passengers had been saved. Wind speeds of up to 70 km/h were present.
Dramatic footage from the island showed rescuers and residents hauling survivors up steep cliffs by rope as others waited on little patches of rock at the bottom, buffeted by the waves.
“We could see the boat colliding with the rocks, and we could see people scrambling up the rocks to attempt to escape.” One of the locals, Martha Stathaki, described it as an astonishing sight.
“To try to assist, all of the locals went down to the harbour.
Local authorities announced that a nearby school would be opened as a place for the rescued to stay. Divers from the Navy were also planned to show up on Thursday.
The majority of migrants entering Greece come from the neighbouring country of Turkey, but smugglers have shifted their methods recently to avoid the heavily monitored waterways near the Greek islands that border Turkey.
Kythira is located around 400 kilometres west of Turkey on a route that smugglers frequently use to skip Greece and travel straight to Italy.
The fatalities happened in the midst of a contentious dispute between Greece and Turkey over the safety of migrants at sea, in which Athens accused Turkey of failing to halt people smugglers operating along its shoreline and even exploiting refugees to exert political pressure on the European Union.
Greek Shipping Minister Yannis Plakiotakis said, “Once again, Turkey’s tolerance of gangs of unscrupulous traffickers has cost human lives.
“The traffickers squeeze unfortunate people, without safety measures, into boats that cannot endure the weather, placing their lives in mortal risk, as long as the Turkish coast guard does not restrict their actions.”
Turkey disputes the accusations and has publicly charged Greece with engaging in careless pushback deportations.
Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at the UN General Assembly and showed up pictures of dead migrant children while accusing Greece of “turning the Aegean Sea into a graveyard.”
dramatic rescues as boats sink near Greece; at least 21 people are killed
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