KALAMATA, Greece (SONNA) \u2014 With its human cargo of migrants filling every available space, the battered blue trawler was about halfway from Libya to Italy when its engine cut out in the night.<\/p>\n
The vessel wobbled sharply, flooded and capsized. Less than 15 minutes later, it sank into one of the Mediterranean\u2019s deepest points, off the coast of Greece. Hundreds of people are thought to have been on board when the boat went down Wednesday, although authorities have no precise figure.<\/p>\n
Rescuers saved 104 passengers \u2014 including Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans and Palestinians \u2014 and recovered 79 bodies. And the search went on early Thursday for more, with aircraft dropping flares to help search teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of the biggest (such) operations ever in the Mediterranean,\u201d Greek coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told state ERT TV. \u201cWe won\u2019t stop looking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sinking could be\u00a0one of the worst ever recorded\u00a0on the feared central Mediterranean migration route, which is the world\u2019s deadliest.<\/p>\n
Ioannis Zafiropoulos, deputy mayor of the southern port city of Kalamata, where survivors were taken, said his information indicated there were \u201cmore than 500 people\u201d on board.<\/p>\n
The 25- to 30-meter (80- to 100-foot) boat is believed to have left the Tobruk area in Libya, which was plunged into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Moammar Gadhafi. The instability allowed migrant smugglers to make Libya one of the main departure points for\u00a0people seeking a better life in Europe.<\/p>\n
Migration experts linked the sinking with the European Union\u2019s failure to provide safe immigration alternatives for people fleeing conflict or hardship in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n
KALAMATA, Greece (SONNA) \u2014 With its human cargo of migrants filling every available space, the battered blue trawler was about halfway from Libya to Italy when its engine cut out in the night. The vessel wobbled sharply, flooded and capsized. Less than 15 minutes later, it sank into one of the Mediterranean\u2019s deepest points, off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":417868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-417867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417869,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417867\/revisions\/417869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}