ATHENS, Greece (AP) 鈥 The Greek coast guard on Friday defended its response to a ship that went down off the country's south coast and left more than 500 migrants presumed drowned. Criticism mounted over Europe's yearslong failure to prevent such tragedies.
Patrol boats and a helicopter spent a third day scouring the area of the Mediterranean Sea where the packed fishing vessel capsized early Wednesday, in what the U.N. migration agency said could be the second deadliest migrant shipwreck recorded. The deadliest occurred when a vessel capsized off the coast of Libya en route to Italy in April 2015, killing an estimated 1,100 people.
Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou said that both coast guard and private ships repeatedly offered by radio and loudspeaker to help the vessel Wednesday while it was in international waters, also heading from Libya to Italy, but they were rejected.
Alexiou argued that any effort to tow the overcrowded trawler or move hundreds of unwilling people onto nearby ships would have been too dangerous.
鈥淲hen you ... try forcibly to tie up to it or to attach a mooring rope, you will have a disturbance, and the people will surge 鈥 which, unfortunately is what happened in the end,鈥 Alexiou told state-run ERT TV. 鈥淵ou will have caused the accident.鈥
Alexiou also said that, after accepting food from a merchant ship, the trawler鈥檚 passengers rejected a rope bringing more from a second merchant ship 鈥渂ecause they thought the whole process was a way for us to take them to Greece."
Greek authorities sent the first ship, the tanker Lucky Sailor, to give the migrants food and water. The company managing the tanker said Friday that the people on board 鈥渨ere very hesitant to receive any assistance, and at any attempt of approach the boat started to maneuver away.鈥
Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Limited said in a statement that the people on the trawler were eventually persuaded to accept supplies.
Experts said maritime law obligated Greek authorities to attempt a rescue.
They definitely 鈥渉ad a duty to start rescue procedures鈥 given the condition of the vessel, said Professor Erik R酶s忙g of the University of Oslo鈥檚 Institute of Private Law. He said a refusal of assistance can be overruled if deemed unreasonable, as it appeared to have been on Wednesday.
Flavio Di Giacomo of the Mediterranean office of the U.N. migration agency IOM tweeted that all migrant boats should be considered dangerous and rescued immediately because 鈥渆ven when they appear to have no problems, in a few minutes they can sink.鈥
Rescuers pulled 104 survivors from the water and later recovered 78 bodies but have not located any more since late Wednesday. The Greek coast guard said the search-and-rescue operation would continue beyond the standard 72 hours.
The U.N.'s migration and refugee agencies issued a joint statement calling timely maritime search and rescues 鈥渁 legal and humanitarian imperative鈥 and calling for 鈥渦rgent and decisive action to prevent further deaths at sea."
A group of nongovernmental organizations, including Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, said the EU should 鈥渟top seeing solutions solely in the dismantling鈥 of smuggling networks, and set up state-led search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean..
鈥淭he Greek government had specific responsibilities toward every passenger on the vessel, which was clearly in distress,鈥 Adriana Tidona of Amnesty International said. 鈥淭his is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions, all the more so because it was entirely preventable.鈥
Greece and other southern EU nations that for Europe-bound asylum-seekers traveling by sea have toughened border protection measures in recent years, extending walls and intensifying maritime patrols.
鈥淭his is a European problem. I think it鈥檚 time for Europe to be able, in solidarity, to define an effective migration policy for these kinds of situations not to happen again,鈥 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York late Thursday.
The EU鈥檚 executive commission says the 27-nation bloc is on how member countries can share responsibility in caring for migrants and refugees who undertake the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.
A judicial investigation is also underway into the causes of the sinking. Greek officials say the vessel capsized minutes after it lost power, speculating that panic among the passengers may have caused the boat to list and roll over.
Most of the survivors were being moved Friday from a storage hangar at the southern port of Kalamata, where , to migrant shelters near Athens.
Abdo Sheikhi, a Kurdish Syrian living in Germany, traveled to Kalamata to find out what happened to five family members who were on the boat.
On Friday, he discovered that only his younger brother Ali and another relative had survived. He managed to speak on the phone to Ali, who has been moved to the camp near Athens.
鈥(Ali) told me he jumped (off the) ship while the others could not jump," Sheikhi said. 鈥淭hey were scared. They were holding on to the boat as it swayed.鈥
Nine people 鈥 all men from Egypt, ranging in age from 20 to 40 鈥 were arrested and detained and charged Friday of people smuggling and participating in a criminal enterprise. Twenty-seven of the survivors remain hospitalized, health officials said. The smuggling suspects are due to appear in court Monday.
The IOM has estimated the boat carried as many as 750 people. The survivors were all boys and men from Egypt, Pakistan, Syria and the Palestinian territories. Alexiou, citing survivor accounts, said passengers in the hold of the fishing boat included women and children but that the number of missing, believed to be in the hundreds, still remained unclear.
Officials at a state-run morgue outside Athens photographed the faces of the victims and gathered DNA samples to start the identification process.
Late Friday, Greece's coast guard said a navy helicopter located a sailboat with migrants off southwestern Greece after being alerted by Italian authorities. It said three merchant ships had reached the vessel, which reported no trouble and was heading for Italy. ERT TV said about 60 people were believed to be on board
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Frances D鈥橢milio in Rome, Renata Brito in Barcelona, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Lebanon, and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece, contributed to this story. ___
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