Galery

1

A boat carrying 28 illegal immigrants - according to the testimony of the only survivor - overturned due to overload near the Island of Lesvos. As a result, 20 passengers were killed. Seven others are still missing, according to authorities, the chance of them still being alive is zero.

On Saturday morning, port authorities discovered the bodies of three of the immigrants on the island's coast. Around 11 a.m., another 15 bodies were discovered, all of them men, on the coast of Loutropoli in Mytilene. At 5 p.m. in the afternoon, the other two were also discovered on the coast near Agios Georgios in Thermi.

On Friday, the crew of a vessel taking part in the joint European operation "Poseidon - Sea Borders 2012" found alive in the sea a twenty-one-year old immigrant who was suffering from hypothermic shock. The survivor was wearing a lifebelt and according to what he told authorities, he and another 27 people, including children, had boarded a boat on the Turkish coast and tried to enter Greece at 2 a.m. on Thursday. About an hour later, when the boat was sailing in the sea, it overturned because of bad weather. The young man was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Mytilene to receive first-aid treatment where he is still under care.

The search for the other missing persons is continuing by sea and land. It is being carried out by the port police and Coast Guard, as well as by private vessels, in cooperation with the forces of FRONTEX. Because of the cold and bad weather conditions, it is believed that there are no survivors.

Political forces have also taken a position on the tragic incident.

According to PASOK, Frontex should terminate these "death trips." In a statement, Triandafilos Costas, Chief of Division to the Parliamentary Group of the party for the Ministry of Public Order, said that, once again, the loss of lives in this tragic way causes sadness and disgust. Frontex needs to group its forces along the Turkish coast in order to be able to prevent these trips across the Aegean Sea. According to Triandafilos, the Turkish authorities are obliged to fully cooperate with the relevant Greek and European authorities.

The Communist Party said that it is not only traffickers who are responsible for this crime with a lot of killed and missing persons. The government and political parties who support the policy of the United States and the European Union, as well as imperialist organisations causing wars, are also responsible - those who support massacres in Syria in the name of human rights are themselves violating them.