Authorities launched an overnight search and rescue operation northwest of Paros. The Coast Guard said air and maritime assets have been deployed in the area.
Greece is one of the main routes into the EU for migrants and refugees from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, although flows have decreased since 2015–2016, when more than a million people moved the country to other EU countries. countries transferred. transferred to the states.
The country’s semi-official Athens News Agency said bodies of 12 men, three women and an infant had been recovered from the area.
Eighty people are believed to have been on board the ship, which, according to the Coast Guard, was on its way from Turkey to Italy.
It was not clear under what circumstances the ship capsized.
Greece’s shipping minister Giannis Plakiotakis said smuggling gangs were responsible for the disaster.
“The gangs are indifferent to human life, with dozens of people on ships without lifejackets that do not conform to the most basic of safety standards,” he said in a written statement.
Earlier on Friday, Greek officials said they had recovered 11 bodies from the scene of another shipwreck when a sailboat carrying migrants sank off an uninhabited island in southern Greece on Thursday.
Another 90 people were rescued in that operation. The Coast Guard said preliminary information suggested that those migrants were also on their way to Italy.
A boat carrying 50 migrants sank off the island of Folegandros overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, with dozens feared missing.