More than 80 migrants on two small boats that had departed from North Africa were rescued Tuesday off Crete, one day after about 200 people reached the southern Greek island.
State ERT television said the one boat with 38 people on board was located by a patrol vessel from the European Union’s Frontex border agency two miles off the islet of Gavdos, south of Crete. Earlier Tuesday, a Frontex drone spotted a boat carrying 43 people some 37 miles south of Gavdos, and a patrol boat picked them up and carried them to Crete.
On Monday, six boats carrying a total 198 people arrived on Crete while last week about 600 people arrived in one day, causing alarm in Athens which has had no success in trying to talk Libyan authorities into stemming the flow.
The island has become the main destination for people from the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Africa trying to enter the European Union through Greece, before travelling on to the continent’s prosperous heartland.
Nearly half the roughly 10,000 people to have illegally entered Greece so far this year followed the route across the Mediterranean Sea from Tobruk in eastern Libya to Crete.
