ATHENS, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Fifteen migrants died after their boat collided with a coast guard vessel, capsized and sank off the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean Sea late on Tuesday, the Greek coast guard said, in one of Greece’s worst shipwrecks in years.
The collision occurred after a migrant boat sailing towards Chios with its navigation lights switched off ignored signals from a coast guard patrol vessel and changed course, the coast guard said in a statement.
The migrant boat capsized and sank due to the severity of the impact, causing all passengers on board to fall into the sea a few miles off the coast of Turkey, the statement said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify how the collision occurred.
Greek authorities later recovered the bodies of 14 people and rescued 25 others – seven women, seven men and 11 minors – the statement added. The migrants, mostly Afghans but including one Moroccan, were taken to hospital, though one of them, a woman, later died.
Migration Minister Thanos Plevris praised the coast guard for their efforts to save the migrants.
“The smugglers are the ones who killed 15 people; the coast guard rescued 24 people,” Plevris told lawmakers in parliament on Wednesday. Responding to a question about how a dinghy could ram a coast guard vessel, he said: “I believe the coast guard.”
Coast guard officials said the eight-metre boat was overloaded, with at least 39 passengers on board. A search and rescue operation involving five coast guard vessels and a helicopter was ongoing.
Greece has long been a favoured gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
In 2015-2016, Greece was at the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis and nearly 1 million people landed on its islands, including Chios, from Turkey.
Greece has come under scrutiny for its treatment of migrants and refugees approaching by sea, including a shipwreck in 2023 in which hundreds of migrants died after what witnesses said was the coast guard’s attempt to tow their trawler.
Port authorities in Chios have launched an investigation into the latest incident.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Angeliki Koutantou and Eleftherios Papadimas; Editing by Ros Russell)
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