2023-09-20 08:20:02
ATHENS (AP) — Authorities launched a rescue operation Wednesday morning for dozens of migrants traveling on a yacht in trouble off the southwest coast of Greece.
According to the Coast Guard, the vessel, believed to have about 90 people on board, was spotted about 40 nautical miles west of the small town of Pylos.
Six of the passengers were picked up by another yacht passing through the area and taken to Pylos, where a woman was taken to a hospital in Kalamata, a city in the south of the country.
Another 25 were rescued by an oil tanker sailing nearby and were heading to Kalamata, while the rest of the passengers were being transferred to another merchant ship, the coast guard explained.
There was also a Coast Guard lifeboat in the area and another of their vessels was on its way. No disappearances have been reported.
The site of the incident is close to where hundreds of migrants died and went missing in a shipwreck in June, a disaster in which Greek authorities were criticized for failing to respond adequately to rescue the passengers.
The overcrowded fishing boat had left Libya with between 500 and 700 people on board, according to estimates. Only 104 survived and 82 bodies were recovered. The rest sank along with the trawler in one of the deepest areas of the Mediterranean.
Last week, 40 of the survivors filed a lawsuit in Greece against “all responsible parties,” alleging that Greek authorities failed to intervene to rescue the passengers before the shipwreck.
Many of the survivors dispute the official story that repeated offers of help from the Coast Guard were rebuffed and claim that a botched effort was made to tow the ship to safety shortly before it capsized and sank.
Greece is on a route used by human traffickers to bring people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia to the European Union.
Many use small inflatable boats to cover the short distance between the Turkish coast and the Greek islands, and others resort to larger sailboats, yachts or fishing boats to try to make a longer crossing from Turkey or North Africa to Italy, avoiding Greece.
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