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The first fishing boat, carrying 352 people, was spotted
overnight about 30 nautical miles (35 miles, 55 kilometers)
south of the tiny island of Gavdos, the coast guard said.
Passengers were rescued by a ship from the European border
patrol agency FRONTEX, aided by a coast guard patrol boat and
four other vessels.
The second was found 50 nautical miles (about 60 miles, 90
kilometers) south of the island of Crete with 278 people on
board. The passengers were picked up by a passing
Portuguese-flagged cargo ship. In both cases, the migrants were
transported to Crete.
There was no immediate information on the nationalities of those
on board the two fishing boats.
Another two boats carrying migrants were located in the same
area on Thursday, the coast guard said. One, carrying 73 men,
was found south of Gavdos and another with 26 people, including
one woman and three minors, was found near the coast of southern
Crete.
The coast guard said those on the smaller boat told authorities
they had set sail the previous evening from Tobruk in Libya, and
had each paid smugglers either 4,000 euros ($5,500) for their
passage to Greece. Two Sudanese teenagers, one aged 16 and the
other 19, were arrested on suspicion of migrant smuggling after
other passengers identified them as having been operating the
boat.
Greece has been on one of the preferred routes into the European
Union for people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East,
Africa and Asia for decades. Arrivals from neighboring Turkey to
the east and the Libyan coast to the south spiked last year,
with Greece recording more than 60,000 people arriving — the
vast majority by sea — in 2024, compared to just over 48,000 the
previous year, according to figures from the U.N. refugee
agency. As of June 15 this year, a total of 16,290 arrivals were
recorded, with more than 14,600 of those by sea.
With authorities closely patrolling the eastern sea border with
Turkey to prevent migrant boats reaching nearby Greek islands,
smugglers appear to be increasingly opting for the much longer
and riskier Mediterranean Sea crossing from the north African
coast to the southern tip of Greece, using larger boats into
which they can cram more people.
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