Migrants rescued by boat with 12 bodies aboard Crete

Athe Greek authorities recovered 12 bodies from a migrant vessel, found south of the island of Crete at dawn, and a cargo ship passing by rescued 18 people from the same boat.

There was no further information immediately on the identity of the 12 people who died or the circumstances of the deaths.

The Greek coast guard reported that the vessel they were following was found about 24 nautical kilometres (28 kilometres) south of the island of Crete.

Two other vessels, one with 47 people and one with 40, were also found sailing south of Crete. The coast guard reported that everyone was being taken to a port on the south coast of the island.

On Sunday, the Greek authorities announced that one man was found dead and 28 others were rescued from another small vessel in distress off the island of Crete, in a rescue operation carried out under adverse weather conditions.

The 28 survivors, all migrants who identified themselves as Sudanese, were transported to Heraclion, the capital of the island, with two of them in need of hospitalization.

The boat was located Saturday night by a Frontex plane, the European Border Surveillance Agency, about six nautical miles off the southern coast of Crete.

A Panamanian flag carrier ship and tugboat participated in the rescue operation, which allowed the rescue of the 28 survivors and recover the corpse.

Rescue operations began after the Greek maritime authorities intercepted a distress call from the vessel, also detected by Frontex.

“ The conditions were very difficult, with winds of strength 5 to 6 on the Beaufort scale (40 to 50 kilometers per hour)”, said France-Presse a spokesman for the Coast Guard.

This is the third migrant accident off Crete in four days.

On Wednesday, the Greek maritime authorities began searches for 59 migrants reported missing after a shipwreck off the island, according to the report of a survivor, a 23-year-old Bangladeshi citizen.

Search operations have not allowed us to locate any of the missing persons, according to the Coast Guard.

Crete is one of the main points of entry into the European Union of migrants, including many Sudanese, who leave Libya and try to carry out the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to Greece.

Shipwrecks in this region as well as off the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea are frequent.

Three weeks ago, 12 migrants died off the islands of Lesbos and Samos, six of them in a collision with a Greek Coast Guard vessel.

In recent months, thousands of migrants have carried out the dangerous sea crossing from North Africa to Greece.

The country is one of the most used routes for people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, to Europe.