More than 80 migrants have been rescued in three separate cases off the southern coast of Crete within less than a day after running into trouble while trying to cross over from north Africa, Greek authorities said Tuesday.
A Coast Guard statement said that 50 people – including two women and five children – were located early Tuesday in a boat 28.5 miles southwest of Ierapetra on the southern island and brought to land.
Around midday Monday, 32 men and a woman were picked up from a boat in trouble 30 miles south of Crete, while around the same time four men and a boy were rescued from the water 50 miles off Crete.
The statement said that in the latter case the migrants told authorities they had been in a boat that ran into trouble and whose remaining passengers had been picked up by Libyan authorities. There was no reference to any missing passengers from the boat.
In all cases the migrants had set off from Tobruk in eastern Libya after paying smuggling gangs for their passage to Crete.
