Greek authorities dispute the accounts of the accident by some survivors of the shipwreck.
A group of people have arrived in the port city of Kalamata, located on the coast of Greece, who believe that their loved ones were in a boat that sank off Greece on Wednesday.
A Syrian rescued from the sea Mohammad18, met his older brother Fade in Kalamata. The brothers embraced each other through the fence. The older brother traveled from Holland against his younger brother who had made a dangerous boat trip to Europe.
Many others are still waiting for information about their loved ones. It is estimated that there were up to 750 people in the sunken ship. All 104 survivors are men. They have said that women and children got stuck in the ship’s hold.
The rescue operation continued on Friday, but no new survivors have been found since Wednesday.
Information about the course of events is contradictory
Aid organizations and doctors have also met shipwreck survivors in Kalamata. According to them, the survivors’ accounts of the events do not match what the authorities have told them.
Those who survived the boat accident have said that the rope of the Greek Coast Guard would have caused the migrants’ boat to capsize, news agencies and BBC. Greek authorities deny the accusations.
According to the BBC, in a video filmed on Thursday, one of the survivors tells the former Prime Minister of Greece who visited Kalamata to Alexis Tsipras, that the coast guard boat had attached a rope to the migrants’ boat and tried to tow it along. However, the boat tilted in the other direction and overturned, the survivor told Tsipras.
A Greek aid worker had heard a similar story.
According to Greek authorities, the coast guard had only used the rope to stabilize the vessel carrying the migrants and ask if it needed help. Otherwise, it was content to follow the vessel.
– There was no attempt to tow the vessel, neither we nor any other vessel, said a spokesman for the coast guard on Friday.
According to the spokesman, the ship may have capsized because the engine failure caused panic among the passengers and caused them to move.
The UN Secretary General criticizes European countries
The shipwreck crime is being investigated. The UN’s International Organization for Migration and aid organizations operating in the Mediterranean demand that European countries take measures to prevent new accidents.
Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres strongly criticizes EU countries for not finding a solution to the situation in the Mediterranean.
– Let’s say it directly. This is not Greece’s problem. This is Europe’s problem. I think it’s time for Europe to be able to define a workable migration strategy so that situations like this don’t happen again, Guterres said at a press conference in New York on Thursday.