migrant boat journey

Timeline: How the migrant boat tragedy unfolded off Greece

Greek authorities say they were notified of the boat’s presence but those onboard repeatedly refused offers for help.

Greek authorities have been accused of failing to rescue hundreds of refugees and migrants onboard a vessel that sunk near the coastal town of Pylos, causing one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea.

Reports suggest as many as 750 people were packed onto the fishing boat that capsized early on Wednesday in deep waters about 80km (50 miles) off the southern Peloponnese peninsula.

Keep reading

‘i’ll die with no regrets’: risking their lives in mediterranean, greece arrests nine survivors from capsized refugee ship, death toll in greece refugee boat tragedy soars to 78.

At least 78 bodies have been recovered and 104 people rescued. Hundreds are still missing.

The Greek coastguard was alerted to the presence of the vessel about 10am (08:00 GMT) on Tuesday. It capsized later that evening.

Exactly what happened in the intervening hours remains unclear.

Alarm Phone, a self-organised hotline for refugees in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, says the boat had reported being in trouble, but Greek authorities say it repeatedly refused offers of help.

Here is a timeline of the events that occurred on Tuesday, according to statements issued by Alarm Phone and Greek authorities:

9:53am (07:53 GMT): Activist Nawal Soufi, based in Italy, alerts Alarm Phone of a large boat in distress carrying 750 people. Over the following hours, Soufi sends additional information, including the GPS position of the vessel. She says authorities in Italy, Greece and Malta were alerted.

12:47 pm (10:47 GMT): A surveillance aircraft from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex spots the overcrowded trawler at and notifies Greek authorities.

The Greek coastguard confirms it was notified of the boat’s presence late on Tuesday morning.

2:17pm (12:17 GMT): Alarm Phone receives the first call from the boat. Its passengers say they are in distress and “cannot survive the night”. The call drops before the GPS coordinates can be confirmed.

Greek authorities say in their statement that they established contact with someone on the trawler at around 2pm. The vessel “did not request any assistance from the Coast Guard or from Greece,” they say.

3:35pm (1:35 GMT): A Greek Coast Guard helicopter located the trawler. An aerial photo released showed it packed, with people covering almost every inch of the deck. Some had their hands outstretched.

4:13pm (14:13 GMT): After a number of failed attempts at communicating with the boat, Alarm Phone receives the coordinates.

4:53pm (14:53 GMT): The organisation alerts the Greek authorities via email as well as other actors, including the EU border agency, Frontex, and UN refugee agency in Greece.

5:10pm (15:10 GMT): Greek authorities ask a Maltese-flagged tanker called the Lucky Sailor to bring the trawler food and water.

According to the company that manages the Lucky Sailor, people on the boat “were very hesitant to receive any assistance,” and shouted that “they want to go to Italy.”

Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Limited said in a statement that the trawler was later persuaded to accept supplies.

5:20pm (15:20 GMT):  The passengers call Alarm Phone saying the boat is not moving and the captain fled on a smaller boat. They add that they need food and water.

6:30pm (16:30 GMT): The Greek coastguard says it observed the boat by helicopter and it was “sailing on a steady course”.

Greek officials say they were faced with a dilemma on what to do with a vessel that had repeatedly declined offers of assistance as they worried that even the slightest shift could unbalance the boat.

6:55pm (16:55 GMT): Soufi writes that migrants on board tell her six people died and another two were very sick. No other account has mentioned deaths prior to the shipwreck.

8:05pm (18:05 GMT): Alarm Phone is informed by the passengers that they received water from the merchant vessel Lucky Sailor and they have been in contact with the police. Alarm Phone also notices that a second merchant vessel, the Faithful Warrior, is close to the boat.

9:00pm (19:00 GMT): Greek authorities say they asked a second, Greek-flagged, merchant vessel to deliver water, and allowed the Lucky Sailor to leave.

10:40pm (20:40 GMT): A Coast Guard boat from Crete reaches the trawler and remains nearby until it sank. According to the Coast Guard, the vessel “discreetly observed” the trawler from a distance. Once again, the Coast Guard said, the trawler did not appear to have any problems and was moving “at a steady course and speed.”

11:00pm (21:00 GMT): Shortly after 11pm, Soufi writes that the trawler began rocking as its passengers tried to catch water bottles from another vessel. According to people on board, ropes were tied to the ship, destabilising it and causing a “state of panic,” she said.

12:46am Wednesday (22:46 GMT): Alarm Phone reports its last contact with the boat in distress. All it hears is: “Hello, my friend. … The ship you send is …” The call cuts off.

The Greek coastguard says merchant ships delivered supplies and observed the vessel until the morning when the satellite phone user reports a problem with the engine.

About 40 minutes later, according to the coastguard statement, the vessel began to rock violently and sank.

The Greek coastguard says the boat’s engine stopped working shortly before 1am on Wednesday (23:00 GMT Tuesday) and the vessel later capsized, sinking in about 10 to 15 minutes.

Who says what?

Coastguard experts believe the boat may have run out of fuel or experienced engine trouble and the movement of passengers caused it to list and capsize.

They suggest the boat might have capsized earlier had they attempted to intervene.

But Greece’s leftist former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says the passengers had “called for help”.

“What sort of protocol does not call for the rescue … of an overloaded boat about to sink?” he asked.

Soufi says in a reconstruction posted on Facebook that the Greek coastguard had been towing the ship before it capsized.

According to messages between Soufi and the passengers, the Greek coastguard tied a rope to the fishing vessel.

The activist said later in a voice memo that “they never expressed the will to continue sailing to Italy,” or refused assistance from Greece. “They were in danger and needed help.”

Greek parliamentarian Kriton Arsenis, who spoke to some survivors in Kalamata, confirms the account and accuses the coastguard of trying to move the boat into Italian waters.

Greek authorities did not mention any attempt to tow the boat in their statements following the shipwreck.

The report from the Lucky Sailor said no lines were tied to the trawler, and supplies were delivered in watertight barrels tied to a rope.

Commander Nikos Alexiou told Greek channel Ant1 TV that the Coast Guard wanted to check on the trawler’s condition, but people on board again refused help and untied the rope before continuing course.

Watch CBS News

Migrant boat disaster: What to know about the tragedy off the coast of Greece

By Camilo Montoya-Galvez

June 30, 2023 / 9:21 AM EDT / CBS News

The sinking of a dangerously overcrowded fishing boat carrying hundreds of migrants near Greece's coast earlier this month has become one of the deadliest refugee tragedies in recent years, and its already-horrifying death toll is expected to climb.

While just over 100 migrants were rescued at sea, officials have recovered more than 80 bodies and as many as 500 people, including children, are still missing and feared to be dead, according to Greek authorities and United Nations officials. Several men arrested by Greek officials have been accused of smuggling the African and Middle Eastern migrants on the fishing trawler.

The humanitarian catastrophe has shined an international spotlight on the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea that thousands of migrants undertake each month in hopes of reaching Europe, as well as the increasingly strict migration policies adopted by European countries amid mass refugee flows and intensifying migrant resentment domestically. It has also raised questions about the actions, or lack thereof, of Greek authorities before the boat capsized.

Here's what you need to know about the tragedy.

What happened?

On June 13, a plane administered by Frontex, the European Union's border agency, spotted a fishing boat in international waters near Greece that was "heavily overcrowded" and "navigating at slow speed." The agency said it notified Italian and Greek officials of the sighthing and the boat's location.

"The plane was monitoring the fishing vessel for 10 minutes before it had to return to base for refuelling. Frontex offered additional aerial support to Greek authorities on [June 13] but received no response," the agency said in a statement to CBS News. Frontex added that Greek officials asked the agency to instead send a drone to another migrant rescue incident further east, off the coast of Crete.

Video taken by the Frontex plane shows the boat was extremely overcrowded that day, with scores of migrants seen shoulder-to-shoulder on top of the vessel alone. The United Nations migration agency estimated that the vessel was carrying between 400 and 750 migrants.

The Greek Coast Guard said it asked nearby vessels to assist the fishing trawler, and later dispatched its own boat after being notified of the incident. The Greek Coast Guard said one of its boats reached the location of the distressed trawler during the evening of June 13. According to the Coast Guard, migrants on the boat rejected the assistance offer and said they want to continue their journey to Italy.

In the early morning of June 14, Greek Coast Guard officials said, the fishing boat capsized and sank roughly 47 nautical miles from the coastal city of Pylos on the Peloponnese peninsula. Greek officials have said the boat's engine failed.

The survivors who were rescued were transported to Kalamata, a city on the Greek mainland, the Coast Guard added. In a statement to CBS News, the United Nations refugee agency said the migrants on the boat hailed from Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Pakistan and Syria. One town in Pakistan lost an entire generation of its young men. 

As of June 28, Greek authorities have confirmed rescuing 104 survivors and recovering 82 bodies.  

What have the survivors said?

Survivors of the tragedy have told news outlets that the fishing boat was severely overcrowded. Some said the boat began to move after other vessels offered supplies and people on board fought over them.

Other survivors have told news outlets that Greek authorities tried to tow the boat, which caused the vessel to move back and forth. Some of them have partially blamed Greek officials for the tragedy. Greek government officials have so far denied that authorities tried to tow the boat, suggesting that the trawler sank because of the engine's failure and movement by the migrants. 

But United Nation officials and other advocates for migrants have said that Greek authorities had a duty to intervene earlier on and get the migrants off the boat, even if they had refused assistance.

"The duty to rescue people in distress at sea without delay is a fundamental rule of international maritime law," the United Nations refugee agency said in a statement. "Both shipmasters and States have an obligation to render assistance to those in distress at sea regardless of their nationality, status or the circumstances in which they are found, including on unseaworthy vessels, and irrespective of the intentions of those onboard."

In a statement, the Greek government said several questions posed by CBS News were being investigated and could not be answered due to legal restrictions tied to an ongoing probe.

Are these tragedies common?

Yes. Deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea have become increasingly common as the number of people taking to the sea in hopes of reaching Europe has increased.

More than 27,000 migrants have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration , the United Nations migration agency. In the first six months of 2023, the agency recorded nearly 2,000 deaths and disappearances of migrants in the Mediterranean. Officials have said these figures are likely undercounted due to data collection limits.

The majority of migrant deaths have occurred in the central Mediterranean, the sea's busiest migration corridor. Frontex, the EU border agency, recorded over 50,000 migrant detections in the central Mediterranean during the first 5 months of 2023 alone, a 160% increase from the same period in 2022.

Over the past decade, individual disasters have claimed the lives of hundreds of migrants. In 2014, roughly 500 migrants died when a boat sank off the coast of Malta.

What are Greece and Europe's policies towards migrants?

Following the arrival of more than 1 million mostly Syrian refugees to Europe in 2015, many countries on the continent adopted more restrictive asylum and migration policies, in part due to the rise of far-right political parties that employed anti-migrant rhetoric to galvanize frustrated voters. 

While EU member states still have relatively generous asylum laws on paper, several countries like Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Greece have sought to stiffen border controls, tighten asylum rules and increase deportations. Even Sweden, which welcomed the highest number of refugees during the 2015 crisis alongside Germany, has recently proposed restricting migration.

The increasingly hardline policies have predominantly targeted new arrivals from Africa and the Middle East. Following the exodus of millions of refugees from Ukraine following the Russian invasion, all European countries, including Poland and Hungary, welcomed the displaced Ukrainians with open arms.

The Greek government, which has complained of shouldering a disproportionate burden of refugee flows due to Greece's position in the Mediterranean and proximity to Asia, has long been accused by human rights officials of mistreating migrants and breaching international law. Reports have documented instances of Greek officials abandoning asylum-seekers, including women and children, at sea, in violation of international refugee law and EU policy.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.

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Migrant boat disaster in Greece: What we know so far

Around 750 men, women and children were said to be onboard the fishing boat before it capsized and sank 45 miles off southern Greece.

Wednesday 28 June 2023 12:46, UK

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A fishing boat overloaded with migrants sunk off the coast of Greece - killing at least 78 people and leaving hundreds missing.

Greek authorities rescued 104 people from the vessel after it got into distress and sank 45 miles southwest of Peloponnese in the early hours of Wednesday 14 June. Seventy-eight bodies were recovered.

Aerial pictures of the boat before it capsized show the deck full of people, with the United Nations' International Organisation for Migration (IOM) saying around 750 men, women and children were on board.

With the missing presumed dead, the sinking is among the worst disasters in the Mediterranean on record.

Here, Sky News looks at what we know about the tragedy.

Where was the boat going - and what happened to it?

The fishing boat reportedly set sail from Egypt and stopped in the Tobruk area of eastern Libya before continuing its journey towards Italy.

It was between 20m and 30m long - and overloaded with people.

Both Greece and Italy are key entry points into the European Union for migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Timeline of events

The timings below are local times:

11am: Greek coastguard says it's been informed about a migrant boat by Italian counterparts

2pm: Coastguard says it made contact with boat – but it refuses help

3.17pm: Alarm Phone receives first distress call from passenger

5.13pm: Alarm Phone says another distress call successfully gives boat's coordinates

5.20pm: Distress call to Alarm Phone says boat isn't moving and "captain left in small boat"

5.53pm : Alarm Phone says it emails Frontex - the European border and coast guard agency - and Greek authorities with coordinates

6pm: Lucky Sailor commercial ship arrives with food and water

9pm: Faithful Warrior commercial ship arrives to provide assistance

10.40pm: Greek coastguard arrives near vessel and observes it from a distance

1.40am: Reports boat's engine has failed

2.04am: Boat capsizes and sinks

The boat was travelling around Greece's southern coast on Tuesday afternoon when it was spotted by the EU's Frontex border agency, which flagged it to both Greek and Italian authorities.

Greek officials say they made repeated offers of assistance, but the boat refused and said it wanted to sail straight on to Italy.

The charity Alarm Phone, which helps save migrants at sea, claims Greek authorities should have launched a rescue mission regardless and were trying to avoid further arrivals.

Distress calls flood in - one saying captain fled

Over the course of the afternoon, Alarm Phone says it received several distress calls from people on the boat.

One at around 5pm local time said the "captain left on a small boat" and asked "please, any solution".

The charity says it notified a nearby commercial ship from Malta, the "Lucky Sailor", which arrived with food and water around 6pm, followed by another boat - "Faithful Warrior" - at around 9pm.

Distress calls continued to come in to Alarm Phone and, just before 2am on Wednesday, one reported the boat's engine had failed.

Reports say the vessel, still overwhelmed with people, started veering side to side and capsized shortly after. It sunk completely in around 15 minutes

The coastguard launched a rescue mission with six of its boats, a navy frigate, a military transport place and an air force helicopter. They were helped by several private boats and a Frontex drone.

They brought 104 people to safety at Kalamata - the nearest Greek port - as well as recovering 78 bodies.

Originally they gave a death toll of 79, but it was later revised down.

How many people were on board?

The exact number of people on board is disputed.

Initially, the deputy mayor of Kalamata told Sky News there were around 550 people on board. But Alarm Phone and the UN's International Organisation for Migration said they believe there were up to 750 people.

Greek authorities say the dead were from Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Palestine.

There were 310 people from Pakistan, 298 of which died and 12 who were rescued, the chairman of the country's senate Muhammad Sadiq Sanjrani, confirmed. There were 135 from the state of Kashmir alone.

All 104 people rescued by the coastguard were men.

A spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said among the estimated 500 missing were "large numbers of women and children".

It was feared they were being kept on the lower deck, so became trapped and drowned when the boat overturned.

A reporter for the Greek news channel ANT1 asked one survivor about a claim there were 100 children on board, to which they replied "yes".

Survivors who have spoken to Greek authorities say they paid $4,500 each to be taken to Italy.

Those rescued and taken ashore were treated for hypothermia, dehydration and psychological trauma - many in hospital.

They were then transferred to an immigration detention centre in Malakasa, central Greece.

Three days of national mourning and nine arrested - but who's to blame?

The Hellenic Coast Guard announced Greek authorities had arrested nine of the men they rescued from the boat for "illegal trafficking of foreigners".

They describe them as "crew of the ship… who had distinct roles in the transport of the rest" - and are all Egyptian nationals aged between 20 and 40.

They have since been charged and appeared in court, and will remain custody until their trial.

A judicial investigation into the sinking has been launched, but it is unlikely the boat will be resurfaced as the Mediterranean is particularly deep where it went down.

Read more: Migrant boat disaster survivor reunited with brother British man fears relatives are among dead off Greek coast Analysis: Med migration is 'dangerous role of the dice'

While Greece declared three days of national mourning, there were protests in Athens and other cities where placards blamed the coastguard and the EU for the disaster.

Alarm Phone has repeatedly accused Greek border forces of refusing to help migrant boats - and actively pushing back vessels around its shores.

It says Greece's "hostile reputation" means people smugglers are trying to avoid it by taking much longer routes, which risks more lives being lost at sea.

Last month, Greece came under international criticism after a video appeared to show its coastguard deliberately abandoning migrants on a raft.

International maritime law states they must help boats in distress - whether they are sinking or on fire.

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A Greek newspaper has reported that the coastguard tried to throw a rope to the boat in order to tow it on Tuesday, with some claiming this may have caused it to sink.

Coastguard spokesperson Nikos Alexiou denied those reports and defended its actions.

He said the vessel was being followed by the coastguard and private boats in international waters before it sank - and it refused offers of help over radio and loudspeaker.

Other Greek officials have speculated panic after the engine cut out could have been the cause of the sinking.

Meanwhile, there has been a crackdown on migrants in Libya, with thousands of people who have travelled from Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Pakistan - in the hope of crossing over to Europe - detained or returned.

The summer weather has still seen people traffickers take advantage of calmer conditions and increase numbers doing the dangerous crossing.

More than 20,000 people have died attempting the journey since 2014.

Related Topics

• Migrant Crisis

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

They knew the boat could sink. Boarding it didn’t feel like a choice.

The story of how as many as 750 migrants came to board a rickety blue fishing trawler and end up in one of the Mediterranean’s deadliest shipwrecks is bigger than any one of the victims. But for everyone, it started somewhere, and for Thaer Khalid al-Rahal it started with cancer.

The leukemia diagnosis for his youngest son, 4-year-old Khalid , came early last year. The family had been living in a Jordanian refugee camp for a decade, waiting for official resettlement after fleeing Syria’s bitter war, and doctors said the United Nations’ refugee agency could help cover treatment costs. But agency funds dwindled and the child’s case worsened. When doctors said Khalid needed a bone-marrow transplant, the father confided in relatives that waiting to relocate through official channels was no longer an option. He needed to get to Europe to earn money and save his son.

“Thaer thought he didn’t have a choice,” said his cousin, Abdulrahman Yousif al-Rahal, reached by phone in the Jordanian refugee camp of Zaatari.

In Egypt, the journey for Mohamed Abdelnasser, 27, started with a creeping realization that his carpentry work could not earn enough to support his wife and two sons.

For Matloob Hussain, 42, it began the day his Greek residency renewal was rejected, sending him back to Pakistan, where his salary helped put food on the table for 20 extended family members amid a crippling economic crisis.

“Europe doesn’t understand,” said his brother Adiil Hussain, interviewed in Greece where they had lived together. “We don’t leave because we want to. There is simply nothing for us in Pakistan.”

At least 79 dead, hundreds missing in year’s deadliest wreck off Greece

On Matloob’s earlier journey to Europe, he had been so scared of the water that he kept his eyes closed the whole time. This time, the smugglers promised him they would take him to Italy. They said they would use “a good boat.”

The trawler left from the Libyan port city of Tobruk on June 9. Just 104 survivors have reached the Greek mainland. Eighty-two bodies have been recovered, and hundreds more have been swallowed by the sea.

As the Mediterranean became a stage for tragedy on June 14, a billionaire and several businessmen were preparing for their own voyage in the North Atlantic. The disappearance of their submersible as it dove toward the wreckage of the Titanic sparked a no-expenses-spared search-and-rescue mission and rolling headlines . The ship packed with refugees and migrants did not.

In missing submersible and migrant disaster, a tale of two Pakistans

About half the passengers are believed to have been from Pakistan. The country’s interior minister said Friday that an estimated 350 Pakistanis were on board , and that many may have died. Of the survivors from the boat, 47 are Syrian, 43 Egyptian, 12 Pakistani and two Palestinian.

Some of the people on the trawler were escaping war. Many were family breadwinners, putting their own lives on the line to help others back home. Some were children. A list of the missing from two towns in the Nile Delta carries 43 names. Almost half of them are under 18 years old.

This account of what pushed them to risk a notoriously dangerous crossing is based on interviews with survivors in Greece and relatives of the dead in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, as the news sent ripples of distress throughout communities from North Africa to South Asia. Some people spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they feared being drawn into government crackdowns on human smuggling networks.

Rahal’s family said they do not know how he contacted the smugglers in Libya, but remember watching as he creased under the fatigue and shame of having to ask anyone he could for the thousands of dollars they were requesting for safe passage to Italy.

Greek and E.U. policies under scrutiny after devastating shipwreck

Thirteen men left from El Na’amna village, south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in the hope of achieving the same. Ten miles away in Ibrash, another village, Abdelnasser left the house as he usually did for his 2 a.m. factory shift but joined a packed car to Libya instead, along with 29 other young men and boys. “He told us nothing,” said his father, Amr. “We would have stopped him.”

Many of the families said the departures caught them by surprise and that local intermediaries working for the smugglers later communicated with relatives in Egypt to gather the requested funds.

In El Na’amna, several people said the figure was $4,500 per person — a sum impossibly high for most rural Egyptians. In Ibrash, Abdelnasser’s uncle said, two of the delegates who arrived to collect the money were disguised in women’s dress. Another woman did the talking. She collected the money, photographed receipts, and then told the family that the deal was done.

‘He said the boat was very bad’

The time spent waiting in Libya was harder than the migrants expected, said family members who spoke with them throughout that period. The port city of Tobruk had become a transit hub for people, and the migrants reported that the smugglers treated them like goods to be traded. The lucky ones rented cramped apartments where they could wait near the bright blue sea.

Travelers who had arranged to meet their intermediaries in the city of Benghazi were transported in large refrigerator trucks to the desert. One survivor described a house there “with a big yard and big walls and people at the door with guns.” It was so busy that people slept in the yard outside. Inside, a 24-year-old Pakistani migrant, Bilal Hassan, tried to lighten the mood by reciting Punjabi poetry. He is smiling in the video he sent his family, but other men in the room look tense.

Some migrants told their families they were getting anxious and didn’t trust their smugglers. Others sent brief messages to reassure and say that they were fine.

Rahal spoke to his wife, Nermin, every day. A month passed with no news of onward passage and his mood darkened. He worried about Khalid. In Jordan, the boy kept asking when he would see his father again. “I don’t know,” Rahal texted in reply. When one smuggler’s offer fell through, he found another who promised to get the job done faster. In voice messages to his cousin, he sounded tired.

“I’ll manage to get the money,” he said.

His last call to his wife was June 8. Men from the smuggling network were yelling at the migrants to pack together as closely as possible in rubber dinghies that would take them to the trawler. Up ahead, the blue fishing boat looked like it was already full.

Matloob Hussein, the Pakistani who had lived in Greece, called his brother from the trawler. “He said the boat was very bad,” Adiil recounted. “He said they had loaded people on the boat like cattle. He said he was below deck and that he preferred it so he didn’t have to see that he was surrounded by water.”

When Adiil asked why his brother hadn’t refused to board, Matloob said the smugglers had guns and knives. As the boat pulled out of Tobruk’s concrete port, he told Adiil he was turning his phone off — he did not expect to have a signal again until they arrived.

After the calls to loved ones stopped, from the foothills of Kashmir to the villages of the Nile Delta, families held their breath.

It felt, said one relative, like a film that had just stopped halfway through.

In hometowns and villages, waiting for news

News of the blue trawler’s capsize trickled out on the morning of June 14. The coast guard’s initial report said that at least 17 people had drowned while noting that more than 100 had been saved. On the Greek mainland, relatives waited for updates in the baking sun outside a migrant reception center. Back in hometowns and villages, some people kept their cellphones plugged into the power sockets so they did not risk missing a call.

The residents of El Na’amna and Ibrash didn’t know what to do. Police arrested a local smuggler but provided no updates on the whereabouts of the missing. Rumors swirled that most were dead. The mother of 23-year-old Amr Elsayed described a grief so full that she felt as if she were burning.

A Pakistani community leader in Greece, Javed Aslam, said he was in direct contact with more than 200 families asking for news. Accounts from survivors suggested that almost all the Pakistani passengers, along with many women and children, had been stuck on the lower levels of the boat as it went down.

Adiil came looking for his brother. He was turned away from the hospital where survivors had been treated, but left his details anyway. Outside the Malakasa reception center, where the survivors were staying, 15 miles north of Athens, several Pakistanis seemed to know Matloob as “the man in the yellow T-shirt.” No one had seen him since the wreck.

Perhaps it was crazy, Adiil said Thursday, but somehow he still had hope. He had registered his DNA with the local authorities and he had spoken to other families there every day. Now he didn’t know what to do with himself. His eyes were red from crying. He carried creased photographs of his brother in his pocket.

In one image, Matloob is standing with his dark-eyed daughter, 10-year-old Arfa. Adiil had told the girl that her father was in the hospital, but that fiction was weighing more on him by the day as she kept asking why they couldn’t speak.

Khalid had been asking for his father, too, but no one knew how to make a 4-year-old understand something they barely understood themselves.

Nermin, relatives said, was “in bad shape.” She had a funeral to organize without a body. But first she had to take Khalid to the hospital for his biopsy, to learn how far the cancer had spread.

Loveluck reported from London, Labropoulou from Athens, O’Grady and Mahfouz from Cairo and Noack from Paris. Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, Claire Parker in Washington, Imogen Piper in London and Mustafa Salim in Baghdad contributed to this report.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the trawler left the Libyan port city of Tobruk on June 8. It left a few hours later on June 9. The article has been corrected.

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Nearly 2,000 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean this year. Here's why

Laurel Wamsley

This handout image provided by Greece's coast guard on June 14 shows scores of people on a battered fishing boat that later capsized and sank off southern Greece, drowning hundreds of migrants. Hellenic Coast Guard via AP hide caption

This handout image provided by Greece's coast guard on June 14 shows scores of people on a battered fishing boat that later capsized and sank off southern Greece, drowning hundreds of migrants.

Many around the world closely followed the plight last week of five wealthy men who went missing aboard a Titanic- bound submersible. Meanwhile, researchers at the United Nations' International Organization for Migration (IOM) updated the number of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe by sea this year: nearly 2,000.

While sub disappearance transfixes some, many say their focus is on other calamities

The number of people who lose their lives each year in the crossing is staggering, and this year is on track to be worse than the last. Here are some of the reasons why this year has become so deadly:

Hundreds died aboard the Adriana

According to IOM data, at least 1,999 migrants died between January 1 and June 26 of this year, mostly from drowning. In the same period last year, 1,358 died. These tallies include those who died in the three major routes across the Mediterranean, as well as at the Atlantic route from West Africa.

Goats and Soda

They set sail with dreams and met disaster: stories from the ill-fated migrant ship.

One enormous tragedy accounts for a large portion of the uptick: the capsizing of the fishing boat Adriana two weeks ago in deep waters off the coast of Greece. The boat had departed Libya crammed with hundreds of people. When it capsized, it took the lives of most of the migrants on board, and IOM estimates the number who perished at 596.

Migrants from Eritrea, Libya and Sudan crowd the deck of a wooden boat as they wait to be assisted by aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms, in the Mediterranean sea about 30 miles north of Libya, on June 17. Joan Mateu Parra/AP hide caption

Migrants from Eritrea, Libya and Sudan crowd the deck of a wooden boat as they wait to be assisted by aid workers of the Spanish NGO Open Arms, in the Mediterranean sea about 30 miles north of Libya, on June 17.

More people are attempting the crossing

Another factor is that the overall number of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean is higher than it was last year.

Italy in particular has seen a significant increase in the number of migrants arriving: more than 60,000 so far this year, compared with fewer than 27,000 at this point last year. IOM estimates that the total arrivals of migrants by sea to Mediterranean Europe are more than 82,000 this year, compared to fewer than 49,000 by this time last year.

Conflict In Libya

Tiny italian island faces flood of refugees.

Italy Becomes A Leading Destination For Migrants, Matching Greece

Many of the migrant boats are aiming for the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which sits about halfway between Tunisia and Sicily. Two flows of migrants are now arriving at Lampedusa: those from Tunisia and those from Libya. Last week, 37 migrants went missing after their boat capsized between Tunisia and Lampedusa.

Migrants are traveling on boats not made for high seas

A new type of vessel has been departing Tunisia since October: boats made of iron.

Why Tunisians are now risking their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe

These boats are prone to breaking and can capsize very easily. "The iron boats are the most fragile boats we have even seen in the Mediterranean," Flavio di Giacomo, spokesperson for IOM Italy, tells NPR.

"This is the first time I'm seeing migrants arrive in such bad condition from Tunisia," he says. "They arrive wet, without shoes, and exhausted. They arrive barefoot because there's water inside the boat."

The Libyan route has long been more dangerous than the Tunisian route, because it's farther. But with the use of iron boats, the Tunisian route has become much riskier than before.

Meanwhile, the route from Libya remains dangerous. At least 700 people are thought to have been crammed onto the Adriana – and overloaded boats are much more likely to capsize.

Reva Dhingra, a post-doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in Middle East migration and migratory flows, says that smuggling networks in Libya and especially Tunisia worsen the problem.

Smugglers overload people onto flimsy fishing boats that are not seaworthy, "putting people in boats that really do not give them a good chance of getting into Europe," says Dhingra. "But that's often not the goal for the smugglers. They don't necessarily care if people reach their destination. They just care that they're paid for it."

Help from authorities is slow to arrive, and aid groups that help may be prosecuted

After the Adriana capsized, the Greek coast guard said it had not intervened because the Adriana had been progressing en route to Italy and did not need rescuing. But a BBC investigation found evidence that the boat had hardly moved for seven hours before it sank.

Greek court orders smuggling suspects held pending trial over migrant ship disaster

Di Giacomo says European coast guards are slow to intervene because it is not a priority for their governments. "These migrant boats don't meet the minimum requirement to sail at high seas, because they could capsize. So they should be saved immediately," he says. "[The coast guards] are not respecting the law of the sea."

Wreckage of a capsized boat was washed ashore at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, in February. Paolo Santalucia/AP hide caption

Wreckage of a capsized boat was washed ashore at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, in February.

The number of migrants arriving in Europe now is similar to that of 2015-2017, di Giacomo says. But rescues were faster and more efficient then, because there were more European and non-governmental organization rescue ships at sea to aid boats in distress.

The New York Times published video footage last month that appears to show masked men putting asylum seekers — including young children — out to sea and the Greek coast guard abandoning them on an inflatable raft. They were picked up an hour or two later by the Turkish coast guard. The video appears to show a "pushback" — a practice whereby a state forces refugees and migrants out of its territory.

"The priority should be saving lives at sea. But this is not happening," says di Giacomo.

Dhingra notes that rescue efforts by civil society groups have been criminalized. Earlier this year, two dozen aid workers who participated in migrant rescue operations were put on trial in Greece . The UN said there were no longer any civil society rescue teams operating in Greek waters.

The true number of those who have drowned in the sea is thought to be far higher than IOM's minimum estimates.

"This year, there are probably a lot of ghost shipwrecks – boats that nobody knows about," di Giacomo says.

Dhingra says that to reduce the number of migrants who die in the crossing, it's vital to decriminalize rescue efforts, and focus on funding for protections and rights for migrants and refugees in transit countries such as Libya and Tunisia.

And, she says, "open more legal pathways for people to be able to access, so they don't have to make the desperate choice of going to sea."

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At Least 4 Dead as Boat Capsizes in English Channel

British and French maritime authorities were carrying out a major rescue operation, a day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain announced new plans to slow such crossings.

By Megan Specia and Mark Landler

LONDON — At least four people died when a small boat capsized in the English Channel early on Wednesday, according to British officials, the latest in a series of tragedies in the waterway that have underscored the government’s inability to cut off the route.

A day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to combat such crossings , the authorities were initially alerted to reports of a small boat in distress in the Channel around 3:05 a.m., and began a coordinated search-and-rescue operation led by the coast guard, according to a statement from the British Home Office.

Harrowing images taken from aboard a fishing vessel that was among the first to respond to the scene and shared with British news outlets showed the boat pulled up alongside a partially deflated dinghy, as a number of people, some wearing life vests, cling precariously to ropes on the side of the vessel.

In the clip, many of the people still on the dinghy were visibly panicked, and in later footage, a number of people are seen struggling in the frigid waters of the Channel in the dark as a rescue lifeboat also attempts to come to their aid.

Vessel tracking data from the Arcturus , the fishing vessel involved in the rescue, showed that around 2 a.m., the ship began making a tight circle around an area of the Channel between Dungeness in Kent and the French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer. This is presumably when it was responding to the dinghy.

Ben Squires, who owns the boat involved in the rescue, told ITV News that the skipper recounted the details of the scene to him and described it as a “horrific” incident.

“We’re talking about human beings and people’s lives, and lives have been lost today, but I’m really glad that we managed to save 31,” he said, noting that they managed to pull those people onboard their boat. “The heroes are the skipper and the crew of our boat today.”

The number of people trying to make the dangerous and occasionally fatal journey from northern France to England has swelled in the past year , and the crossings have become a political problem for the Conservative government.

Although the authorities confirmed that four people had died, the agency did not immediately confirm the condition of the other passengers or the total number aboard. Lifeboats and helicopters from the British Coast Guard were involved in evacuating passengers from the scene of the accident, and a Royal Navy patrol boat, a French Navy helicopter and a French fishing boat also helped.

Temperatures in Britain have dropped below freezing for several days in a row, and conditions in the Channel grow especially treacherous during the winter months, adding to the risks for those trying to make the journey.

Volunteer lifeboats were dispatched from several locations along the Kent coastline.

Mr. Sunak announced on Tuesday a renewed effort to cut down on migrant crossings of the Channel, saying that Britain would seek to clear a huge backlog of asylum applications.

Mr. Sunak has put an emphasis on rejecting asylum claims from Albania, which has become one of the leading sources of migrants using the Channel route.

“We have to stop the boats, and this government will do what must be done,” Mr. Sunak said in a statement on Tuesday to Parliament.

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak said, “Our hearts go out to all those affected and our tributes to all those involved in the extensive rescue operation.”

Suella Braverman, the British home secretary and the minister responsible for immigration policy, said in a statement to Parliament that the deadly incident and others like it were the “most sobering reminder possible of why we have to end these crossings.”

“These are the days that we dread,” she said, adding that, “crossing the Channel in unseaworthy vessels is a lethally dangerous endeavor.”

“But it is for this reason above all that we are working so hard to destroy the business model of the smugglers,” she said.

Ms. Braverman has been the target of intense criticism by human rights groups for her harsh stance on those arriving by small boat in Britain, including her emphatic support for a program that would send asylum seekers who arrive by that means to Rwanda , in central Africa. At one point, she said it was her “dream” to see the flights take off.

The policy has been challenged in Britain’s courts, and so far no asylum seekers have been sent to the African nation.

Last month, Britain and France signed a new agreement to try to stem the crossings by small boats, with Britain agreeing to pay France 72.2 million euros, about $76.4 million, during 2022 and 2023 to increase patrols on northern French beaches. At its narrowest point, the distance between the two nations on either side of the Channel is just 21 miles.

While Britain has been slow to process asylum claims, most people who arrive by small boat and whose cases have been examined are refugees fleeing war and persecution and therefore entitled to protections under international law, researchers have found .

Although the number of small-boat crossings has grown, they still make up only a tiny fraction of the overall number of arrivals in Britain, migration experts say.

But as the number of boat crossings rises, the human toll mounts. Many of the boats that set off from the French coast are inflatable dinghies packed with dozens of people and unfit for traversing one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, where high winds can bring dangerous swells.

The hazards of the boat crossings were starkly illustrated when an inflatable dinghy carrying 30 people capsized in French territorial waters near Calais and Dunkirk in November 2021. Twenty-seven of the passengers were killed in that accident, the most serious since migrant groups began collecting data.

Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, a charity that supports asylum seekers, said in a statement that there were “no words to express our horror” as news of the fatal incident broke on Wednesday. The charity has been pushing for an official inquiry into potential failures that led to such a high loss of life in the 2021 capsizing.

A year on from those deaths, “Our government has done nothing to prevent further deaths and so has failed both the refugees who need our help and our country,” she noted.

She also criticized the lack of a safe route into the country for refugees fleeing war, calling the deaths on Wednesday “wholly unnecessary and preventable.”

Megan Specia is a correspondent on the International Desk in London, covering the United Kingdom and Ireland. She has been with The Times since 2016. More about Megan Specia

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief. In 27 years at The Times, he has been bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, European economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. More about Mark Landler

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4 migrants die while attempting to cross the English Channel from northern France

FILE - A group of Kurdish migrants from Iran and Iraq who failed in their attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boat after being discovered by the police refuse to return to shore on the beach of Ambleteuse, northern France, on Sunday, May 19, 2024. Four migrants have died while trying to cross the English Channel from France to the U.K., French authorities said Friday JULY 12, 2024. Their inflatable boat capsized and punctured off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northern France, the prefecture responsible for the north of France said in a statement. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

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PARIS (AP) — Four migrants have died while trying to cross the English Channel on an inflatable boat from France to the U.K., French authorities said Friday.

The migrants’ vessel capsized and punctured off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northern France, the prefecture responsible for the region said in a statement. Sixty-three people were rescued by the French coast guard.

A French navy patrol boat spotted the overcrowded vessel early Friday as it deflated off the French coast. Several people were “drifting in the water while others were still clinging to the broken rubber dingy,” the statement said.

Navy vessels, a fishing boat and a Navy helicopter joined the effort. Survivors were brought to the shore in Boulogne to receive medical attention and temporary shelter, the statement also said.

Migrants trying to reach the U.K. risk drowning as they try to cross the busy English Channel , often aboard crowded, unseaworthy boats.

French maritime officials responsible for the Channel and the North Sea warned anyone who plans to cross the Channel to reconsider due to the many risks involved in the perilous journey. The channel is one of the busiest waterways in the world, with more than 600 commercial ships sailing through it daily, and weather conditions are often difficult due to strong winds that prevail 120 days a year, their Friday statement said.

“It’s dangerous even when the sea seems calm,” they said.

The Boulogne public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, suspecting intentional homicide, the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, Jacques Billant, said while visiting the site of the tragedy.

Billant said the human smuggling rings who operate in the area and arrange the illegal crossings at astronomical prices were responsible for the deaths.

“I repeat it with the greatest force, these are criminal networks that are putting migrant populations at unconsidered risk,” Billant told reporters. “Setting sail in an overloaded boat, with particularly unfavourable weather conditions like those this morning, is certainly risking death.”

Friday’s tragedy in the channel comes amid a continuing flow of people making the journey to the U.K. The latest figures from Britain’s Home Office, which deals with immigration issues, show that 62 people travelled across the Channel in one boat on Thursday, taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 14,120.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who took over earlier this month after the Labour Party’s election victory, has launched a Border Security Command designed to crack down on people-smuggling gangs orchestrating the crossings. A commander for the new entity has not yet been appointed.

“The further loss of life in the Channel ... is truly awful. My thoughts are with all those affected,″ Cooper wrote. “Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk. We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue and bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”

The leader of Britain’s anti-immigrant Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, underscored the pressure to address the issue in a post on X Friday.

“The new government had better start moving fast,” he said.

Last month, British authorities rescued 80 migrants at sea after a small boat got into difficulty while crossing the English Channel from France.

An estimated 30,000 people made the crossing in 2023, according to U.K. government figures.

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Four migrants die trying to cross English Channel in boat

Overnight a boat capsized and migrants fell into the sea off the coast of boulogne-sur-mer in northern france, article bookmarked.

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Four people have died while trying to cross the English Channel to the UK from France in a boat.

Overnight a boat capsized off the northern French coast near Boulogne-sur-Mer, where several people were reported as being in the water at around 4.30am on Friday morning.

Four people found unconscious could not be saved by parademics and a further 63 were rescued and returned to Boulogne to be attended to by emergency services.

Posting on X, home secretary Yvette Cooper said the loss of life was “truly awful” and that criminal gangs were making “vast profit from putting lives at risk”.

Refugee charities said the “deeply upsetting” deaths in the Channel were avoidable and urged the Labour government to open safe routes for migrants to stop the dangerous crossings.

An HM Coastguard spokesman said assistance was offered to the French coastguard on Friday, adding: “An RNLI lifeboat from Dover and Border Force vessel were initially sent to provide support, but were not required to attend the scene.”

The deaths come after more than 14,000 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the Channel.

Home Office figures show 419 people made the journey in six boats on Tuesday, suggesting an average of around 70 people per boat and taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 14,058.

This is 10 per cent higher than the number recorded this time last year (12,772) and up 6 per cent on the same period in 2022 (13,318).

Last year, 29,437 migrants arrived in the UK after making the journey, down 36% on a record 45,774 in 2022.

The latest crossings on Tuesday meant 484 migrants arrivals have been recorded over two days of activity in the Channel since Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister in the wake of Labour’s election victory last week.

Earlier this week Sir Keir warned that the number of migrants crossing the Channel “cant be changed overnight” and said the situation could get worse before it gets better.

Asked by reporters if his vow to “smash the gangs” means stopping the boats and if the situation could get worse before it gets better, he said: “I have always said the previous government’s Rwanda policy was a gimmick, it wouldn’t be a deterrent.

“They argued, if I recall that even the passing of the legislation would be a deterrent. It clearly hasn’t worked, wasn’t going to work – we’ve had record numbers coming over this year.

“That unfortunately is what we’ve inherited – we can’t change that overnight.”

Pressed again on whether the situation will deteriorate before it improves, he added: “It can’t be changed overnight. What we can do is set up our first steps straight away.

“The Border Security Command… will lead on smashing the gangs.

“I do not accept these are the only gangs that can’t be brought down. I’m determined that our Border Security Command working with others will do so. That’s why it’s got such a rich mix of security and intelligence, alongside prosecutors, alongside law enforcement.

“And we will get on with the recruitment and setting up that Command at speed.”

Steve Smith, CEO of Care4Calais said it was “deeply upsetting” that more lives had been lost in the English Channel.

He added: “Every life lost in the Channel is avoidable, and politicians have the power to end these tragedies. Channel crossings are fuelled by a lack of safe routes to claim asylum in the UK, and as a refugee charity that operates in both northern France and the UK we know the only way to stop crossings and save lives is to open safe routes.”

Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said: “This devastating loss of life in the Channel highlights the scale of the challenge facing the new Government. Preventing more deaths which are now happening too often is a critical and urgent task.

“We need to bring an end to men, women and children who have fled war and oppression in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran being driven into the arms of the smuggling gangs by opening safe routes so refugees wanting to be with their families are not forced to take deadly risks.

“We also need to put in place cooperation agreements with our European allies to provide safe passage from France and trial the use of refugee visas. At the same time there is much more the UK can do to to address conflict and oppression in refugee producing countries.”

Additional reporting by PA

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Deaths of four migrants crossing English Channel 'truly awful', says Home Secretary

• English Channel
• Friday 12 July 2024 at 2:51pm

Home Secretary describes deaths of four migrants crossing Channel as 'truly awful', ITV News Reporter Martha Fairlie explains the latest developments

The deaths of four migrants after their boat capsized in the English Channel are "truly awful", the Home Secretary has said.

More than 60 people were on the boat off the northern French coast near Boulogne-sur-Mer, where several people were reported as being in the water at around 4.30am on Friday.

Some 63 migrants were rescued in an operation involving four ships and one helicopter, including a fishing vessel which picked up 14 of the people who got into trouble, according to the French coastguard.

Medical teams provided help for four people but they could not be saved, the maritime prefecture added.

The surviving group of people were returned to Boulogne and attended to by emergency services.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on X: “The further loss of life in the Channel this morning is truly awful. “My thoughts are with all those affected. “Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk. “We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue & bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”

Latest Home Office figures show 419 people made the journey across the Channel from France to the UK in six boats on Tuesday, suggesting an average of around 70 people per boat and taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 14,058.

The reports come as five people including a child died trying to cross the English Channel from France to the UK on April 23.

The Home Office and HM Coastguard have been contacted for comment.

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Canary Islands: Two migrants die after reaching El Hierro

A two-year-old girl died in hospital hours after crossing the Atlantic from the coast of West Africa to the Canary Islands. A young 20-year-old who had crossed in the same boat also died.

On Tuesday (July 16), a two-year-old girl was pronounced dead in hospital just hours after crossing the Atlantic in a small boat from Senegal.  The Spanish rescue authorities brought the boat, on which the little girl had been traveling, to the small island of El Hierro in the Spanish Canary Islands archipelago on Monday evening.

The boat was met about two kilometers from the coast, reported the local news portal Canarias 7 . According to reports in the local press, there were six women and four minors -- two boys and two girls -- on board the boat.

When the boat came into port in El Hierro the little girl was judged to be in a "critical condition" and was flown by helicopter to Tenerife. Sadly, she could not be saved. A 20-year-old man in the same boat also died in hospital on El Hierro.

Also read: A Senegalese fisherman haunted by migrant boat disaster

Seven people hospitalized for dehydration

Seven people, including two children, had to be hospitalized after suffering from dehydration. One little eight-year-old boy was also judged to be in a serious condition, said Spanish medics, but doctors were able to stabilize him. A one-year-old baby remained in a "serious state" on Tuesday, reported the Tenerife newspaper El Día.

On board the boat were nationals from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Guinea Conakry. They told the authorities they had left the coast of Senegal a week before they were eventually found near the Canary Islands. They are estimated to have traveled more than 1,500 kilometers, reported the news agency Europa Press .

Also read: Bodies of migrants found in Brazil may have been headed for Canaries

Canary Islands President calls for change in migration law

The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, told local press: "Just imagine what that little girl, just two years old, must have thought, how she must have suffered, how scared she must have been. Only to arrive, and then die."

He added: "We have to continue to win this battle and modify the laws surrounding immigration ," to help respond to this "emergency on the Canaries."

Since the beginning of the year, more than 19,000 people arrived on the Canary Islands, representing a 167 percent increase in arrivals compared to the same period in 2023. Many of those arriving are unaccompanied minors. The Canary Islands authorities have to offer them special accommodation, while they wait to be transferred to the Spanish mainland.

The Canary Islands authorities have repeatedly called on the central government in Madrid to offer more support, saying that their islands are "overwhelmed" and cannot cope with supporting the number of people who arrive.

Nearly 6,000 unaccompanied minors are being accommodated in structures on the Canary Islands, but they are only really prepared for about 2,000 say the authorities. On July 10, the Spanish government decided to transfer 400 unaccompanied minors off the archipelago and to mainland Spain, to try and ease the situation.

Dangerous crossing

The Atlantic crossing is extremely dangerous. Strong winds and currents blow boats off course. In the middle of June, a boat was found that had been adrift for 17 days and was still more than 800 kilometers away from the Canary Islands. Six bodies were found on board and around 60 migrants saved. But 80 were reported missing.

According to figures from the UN Migration Agency IOM’s Missing Migrants count, almost 500 people have died on the Atlantic route since the beginning of this year. The actual figures could be much higher because it is believed that some migrant boats drift off in the open sea and remain unrecorded. Moreover, many migrants keep their departure secret to try and evade the authorities.

The Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras estimates that the actual number of deaths for the first five months of 2024 could be nearer to 4,800 on the Atlantic route, and 5,054 for all routes to Spain.

🔴 El año 2024 está siendo el más mortífero en frontera jamás registrado: 5054 personas víctimas en cinco meses #DerechoAlaVida2024 pic.twitter.com/wBMHNbmire — Caminando Fronteras (@walkingborders) June 12, 2024

Caminando Fronteras' estimate is based on distress calls and reports from families who haven’t yet heard from their loved ones. The IOM's figures instead are based on deaths that they can 100 percent confirm.

IOM spokesperson Flavio di Giacomo told InfoMigrants at the beginning of this year that it was difficult to ascertain deaths on the Atlantic route because the journey is much longer and the area where a boat might get lost is so much wider. He conceded that although his organization prefers to remain with only facts they can confirm, it is likely that there are "many more deaths that no one has ever mentioned."

In the last 30 days, reported Canarias 7 on Tuesday, eight migrant boats have arrived on or near the coasts of El Hierro, five of them had dead people on board, a total of eight people. Survivors on board those boats claimed they had had to throw the bodies of a further seven migrants overboard during their journeys.

Also read: Senegalese navy stops hundreds of migrant boats in May

More articles

• Identifying dead migrants on Spain's Canary Islands
• Canary Islands: Woman gives birth to her baby mid-Atlantic
• Canary Islands: At least one dead and 170 migrants rescued
• Bodies of migrants found in Brazil may have been heading for the Canary Islands

Tragedy in English Channel after migrant boat SINKS leaving one dead

Labour will fast-track plans to allow 90,000 migrants earmarked for deportation to Rwanda to claim asylum in Britain. 

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is expected to unveil new legislation as early as THIS week that will kickstart the asylum claims process for thousands of people who had feared they could be removed from the UK. 

The Refugee Council estimates that between 60,000 and 90,000 people will be granted asylum despite having entered the country illegally. 

However, officials are expected to prioritise asylum seekers from 'safe' countries such as Vietnam, Albania, Egypt and India , which makes up 30 per cent of the overall figure, The Telegraph reported. 

News of the move comes just hours after a migrant died after an overcrowded dinghy sunk while trying to cross the  English Channel .

Just under 36,000 of the migrants who are set to have their claims processed are currently living in hotels, which cost £2.9 million a day for the taxpayer, the Telegraph reported. 

The paper also understands that the move will not require any changes to Rishi Sunak's Illegal Migration Act, which was brought in last year.

This is because the former Prime Minister never activated two elements of the act -that any asylum claims made in the last 18 months would be deemed inadmissible and they would then be deported to Rwanda - which would have prevented Labour's plans from being enacted. 

It also emerged last night that one migrant had died while trying to cross the Channel from France on a small boat. 

Seventy-one other people were rescued after the vessel deflated off Gravelines on  France 's northern coast on Wednesday, the regional maritime police authority said in a statement.

French emergency services sent a plane, two helicopters and a rescue boat to search for people drifting in the water. 

All those rescued were put ashore at Calais and received by the emergency services.

The tragic death comes as Britain's new Prime Minister Sir  Keir Starmer  has vowed to tackle the migrant crisis by smashing smuggling gangs. 

The Cormoran, a French public service patrol boat, was notified at the end of day Wednesday that a dinghy had deflated off Gravelines. 

French and British emergency responders rushed to provide aid to the 72 migrants who had gone overboard. 

A French ship took 59 people on board, including one who was unconscious and 'could not be revived', the French maritime police said. A British coastguard boat took on a further 13 people. 

Aircraft and vessels searched over a large area around the wreck site until dark and found no other people.

On Friday, four people were reported killed after a packed boat carrying asylum seekers capsized at 4.30am off the coast of Boulogne sur Mer, in northern France. 

The regional prefect, Jacques Billant, said the four dead men were thought to be Somalian, Eritrean or Ethiopian.

He said 56 passengers were rescued from that shipwreck after their vessel likewise deflated.

Five migrants including a young girl also died off the same coastal region on April 23 this year. 

More than 12,000 people have made the Channel crossing so far this year, according to  Home Office provisional figures released in mid-June. 

The figure was 18 percent higher than for the equivalent point last year, when 10,472 people had made the crossing.

Sir Keir and his Labour Government have vowed to create laws that will 'modernise the asylum and immigration system', as well as launch a security border command.

The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, announced in the King's Speech on Wednesday, will establish the new Home Office unit, using counter-terror powers to fight organised immigration crime.

The Bill, which will apply across the UK if passed, will ensure 'secure and stronger borders and a properly controlled and managed asylum system', the Government vowed, as it repeated general promises to clear the asylum backlog, to end the use of hotel accommodation and increase 'fast-track returns for individuals coming from safe countries '.

Building on Labour's manifesto pledges, documents detailing the plans said existing policies had 'failed' to deter Channel crossings or prosecute the people smugglers responsible , and 'our current asylum system is broken'. 

Withdrawing from the 'failed and incredibly costly Migration and Economic Development Partnership' to send migrants to Rwanda would save 'over £100 million in future payments', as well as 'tens of millions of pounds' in additional relocation costs for a small number of people.

But there was no mention of answering calls from campaigners to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act or Illegal Migration Act.

The document setting out the Bill suggests the Government will seek a 'strong deterrent' against migrants crossing the Channel but stops short of detailing what this could be in the absence of the Rwanda deal.

It does indicate tougher penalties for immigration crime, including introducing offences such as 'enabling the advertising (of) the services of a migrant smuggling group' or those for the 'supply of materials needed to facilitate organised crime gangs'.

Sir Keir previously said the Rwanda deal was 'dead and buried before it started' as Labour confirmed it was scrapping the deportation policy.

The arrangement is not thought to have yet formally ended and the cost to the UK Government of walking away early from the five-year deal is so far unknown.

The Rwanda government previously said it had 'fully upheld its side of the agreement'.

Launching the Border Security Command earlier this month, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described it as Labour's first priority on migration, which was designed to crack down on people-smuggling gangs orchestrating the crossings .

A commander for the unit is expected to be appointed in the coming weeks. It is unclear how this will differ from existing units already operating in the Home Office.

Zhukovsky International Airport

Zhukovsky International Airport, formerly known as Ramenskoye Airport or Zhukovsky Airfield - international airport, located in Moscow Oblast, Russia 36 km southeast of central Moscow, in the town of Zhukovsky, a few kilometers southeast of the old Bykovo Airport. After its reconstruction in 2014–2016, Zhukovsky International Airport was officially opened on 30 May 2016. The declared capacity of the new airport was 4 million passengers per year.

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