hundreds of migrants dock in a port after a rescue operation at sea – RT in French

A boat carrying hundreds of migrants on board who had sent out a distress signal at sea docked on November 22 in a port on the Greek island of Crete, the coast guard announced.

According to the Greek public channel ERT, 430 people on board a boat which sent out a distress signal on the night of November 21 to 22 were towed by a fishing boat to the port of Paleochora, in the south-west. from Crete.

Some “400 to 500 people are on board according to their own statements,” said a spokeswoman for the coastguard, adding that the latter had been towed to the port but had not yet disembarked.

No indication was provided of the nationality of these persons. The images from the ERT channel essentially showed men on the deck of an obviously dilapidated and rusty boat.

The coast guard had been alerted on the night of November 21 to 22 by a distress call shortly after midnight as strong winds blew over this area in the extreme south-west of Crete, the largest island in Greece. Two cargo ships, an oil tanker and two Italian fishing boats were nearby to provide assistance, they said.

Migrant smugglers change route

Due to increased patrols by the Greek Coast Guard and the European border surveillance agency Frontex in the eastern Aegean, migrant smugglers now take a longer and more perilous route south of Crete to enter the European Union.

“Eighty percent of flows from Turkey go directly to Italy,” Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told private channel Skai TV last week.

On October 11, at least thirty people died in two shipwrecks off the islands of Lesbos and Kythera. During this last shipwreck which killed at least eight people, dozens of survivors, mainly from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, stranded at the foot of a cliff, were hoisted by the rescuers with a winch.