Galery

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The coast guard has completed six operations over the past 12 hours off the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, rescuing 232 immigrants and taken to the island a total  of 368 illegal immigrants over the past 24 hours.

Yesterday at 6 am, in the last operation that was hampered by darkness and a stormy sea, the coast guard took out from the sea to dry land 45 people, including two babies and two young children. The two babies, 2 and 17 months old respectively, and the children aged 3 and 4 were wet to the skin. Fortunately, when taken to hospital on the island, it was established that they were in good health and returned to their parents.

The accident happened near Agrilia. Upon arriving there, the boat with 45 Syrian immigrants on board suddenly began to fill with water, dangerously listing. All of them ended up in the water in just a few minutes but a coast guard patrol saw them soon after and immediately started an operation to take the immigrants to dry land.

The coast guard had rescued 42 other immigrants at sea near the island's airport in a similar operation a quarter of an hour earlier whereas shortly after midnight, it found in the same area a small boat with 42 people on board, all men from Afghanistan and Pakistan, who were taken to the port.

14 frozen immigrants were found on a deserted beach in the area of Panaiouda in northern Lesbos yesterday morning too and 34 other people on another beach, again in the north, were rescued as well. At noon, another operation of the coast guard rescued 55 people who had fallen out of their boat near the fishing village of Skala in Sikamia municipality.

While patrolling in the afternoon two days ago, the coast guard and rescue team of the island found another 136 immigrants on the coastline from Scala to Mantamados.
 
"This invasion of illegal immigrants should stop. The figures now are unpredictable and we cannot control anything. It seems that Lesbos is surrounded by immigrants. There are people who have come out of the sea onto dry land in all coastal areas. It is a national problem that must be solved by a comprehensive state policy," island mayor Spyros Galinos told the newspaper Ethnos.

As he notes, at least it is over with the scenes of previous days with hundreds of immigrants gathered at the port, as all of them are now at the reception centre in the town of Moria, which has a capacity of about 800 people. There they receive documents under the fast track procedure and leave for Piraeus within 2-3 days.
 
Meanwhile, the authorities yesterday transferred to the village of Pythagorio on the island of Samos 42 immigrants who had beenrescued from the sea southeast of Agathonisi island by the coast guard the same morning. The immigrants were found in the sea, on a half-sunk boat, and an operation to rescue them was immediately organized. There were 7 children and 6 women among them.

52 other immigrants were found yesterday on the beach in Paleokastro on the island of Samos, who were transferred to the reception centre in Vathy.