File photo.
More than 120 undocumented migrants have reached Greece in small boats from north Africa and Turkey over the past 24 hours, authorities said Tuesday, with arrivals recorded both on the southern island of Crete and in the eastern Aegean Sea.
The Coast Guard said that 39 people were located Monday on a beach on southern Crete, who had set off from the Tobruk area of eastern Libya.
A 16-year-old boy from South Sudan among them was arrested on suspicion of piloting the small boat across the Mediterranean Sea on behalf of a smuggling gang that arranged the passage. Sudanese teenagers are frequently assigned similar roles by smugglers.
Also Monday, 33 people were taken off a boat in trouble off the islet of Gavdos south of Crete, that had been spotted by an aircraft operated by the European Union’s Frontex border agency.
