ATHENS (AFP) – At least 17 people died and nearly 30 were still missing after high winds sank two migrant vessels in Greece, the coastguard said yesterday, with some survivors hoisted to safety by crane.
A dinghy believed to be carrying around 40 people sank east of the island of Lesbos in high winds, coastguard spokesman Nikos Kokkalas told state TV ERT, adding that the people are of apparent African origin.
The bodies of 16 women and a young boy have been recovered from the area so far, the coastguard said.
A few hours earlier, the coastguard was alerted to a sailboat in distress near the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula.
The sailboat believed to be carrying around 95 people ran aground and sank near the island port of Diakofti.
Some of the survivors made it to shore, and an operation involving vessels at sea and the fire service and police on land managed to locate 80 asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
Dramatic footage released by the coastguard showed some of the survivors hoisted up the vertical face of a huge cliff by rope, some barely managing to hold on.
Kythira mayor Stratos Harhalakis said a construction crane was also used in the “titanic” rescue operation.
There was no official toll yet from a second sinking near the island of Kythira, south of the Peloponnese peninsula, but Harhalakis said he had seen five bodies.
“This was the worst possible place on the island to crash,” Harhalakis told ERT. “Nobody could approach (them) by sea, it was incredibly difficult.”
The coastguard said 10 other women had been rescued in the Lesbos incident, while over a dozen people were believed to be missing.
It was difficult to get more information from the survivors as they were “utterly panicked,” Kokkalas said.
The survivors in Kythira includes seven women and 18 children, a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.
Kokkalas said their sailboat had been “completely destroyed.”
Both operations were facing adverse weather. In the Kythira area, winds were as high as 102 kilometres per hour, the coastguard said.
