One dead after boat sinks off Greek island

ATHENS: Greece’s coastguard said on Sunday it had found the body of a man believed to have drowned when a migrant boat sank near the island of Samos.

It said 25 people it described as “foreigners” were spotted on a “semi-submerged dinghy... and rescued from the sea west of the South Aegean island.”

They were transferred in good health to the port of Vathi, the coastguard added.

Searches for missing people were underway with the help of European Union border agency Frontex.

State-run TV channel ERT reported survivors as saying four people were missing.

Greece has seen a rise in undocumented migrants this year.

More than 7,000 people arrived in January and February, an increase of 184 per cent compared to 2023 according to official data.

The country of 10.4 million has received more than 460,000 applications for asylum since 2013, including over 12,500 this year.

The islands in the northeastern Aegean Sea are one of the gateways for asylum seekers hoping to reach the European Union, many fleeing conflict or poverty.

In June 2023, 82 people drowned and hundreds went missing when a migrant trawler sank off the coast of Pylos.

Several inquiries into the tragedy are still underway and certain NGOS have accused the Greek coastguard of delaying efforts to come to the migrants’ aid.

Meanwhile, thousands of sub-saharan migrants have huddled in Tunisian olive groves for months, living in makeshift tents and surviving on meagre rations while keeping their hopes alive of reaching Europe.

Around 20,000 are in isolated areas near the towns of El Amra and Jebeniana, some 30 and 40 kilometres north of the port city of Sfax, humanitarian sources say.

Sfax is one of Tunisia’s main departure points for irregular migration to Europe by boat, and was once a hub for sub-saharan migrants.

After being forcibly removed from the city last autumn, migrants set up camp in neighbouring towns as they awaited their chance to make the perilous crossing. One weary 17-year-old calling himself Ibrahim told AFP he had left Guinea more than a year ago, hoping to reach the other side of the Mediterranean “to provide for his sick mother and little brother” back home.

He said that after walking for three weeks from the border with Algeria, he arrived in El Amra in midwinter, about three months ago.

“It’s really difficult here,” he said, adding that he and other migrants feel trapped on the sidelines of society.

“You can go out looking for work, but when it’s time for your employer to pay you, they would call the police,” he said.

After President Kais Saied said in a speech last year that “hordes of illegal migrants” posed a demographic threat to Tunisia, anti-migrant violence broke out and hundreds of sub-saharan Africans were kicked out of their jobs and homes.

Tens of thousands embarked from Sfax in 2023 because of its proximity to Italy, the closest European country.

“We are only a few kilometres from Europe,” said Ibrahim of Lampedusa island some 150 kilometres away.

Near El Amra, in tents made of tarpaulins and rods, groups of five - and at times even 10 - share the same sleeping space.

Men, women and children, mostly from Cameroon, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sudan, congregate by language.

The women cook stew as men remove the feathers of inedible-looking yet indispensable bony chickens. The winter “was very cold, but we managed to survive thanks to the solidarity we have as African brothers,” said Ibrahim.

“If someone has food and you don’t, they give you some,” he said.

“We bought the tarpaulins with our money,” which relatives managed to send them, “or by begging.”

Some 7,000 migrants received their first food aid in months from NGOS earlier in April, but they said this was not enough and called for more help from Europe, which has ramped up measures aiming to curb irregular migration.