German aid group RESQSHIP, which operates the Nadir rescue boat, said it picked up 51 people from a sinking wooden boat, including two who were unconscious, and found 10 bodies trapped in the lower deck of the vessel.
Survivors were handed over to the Italian coastguard and taken ashore on Monday morning, while the Nadir was making its way to the Italian island of Lampedusa, towing the wooden boat with the deceased, the charity said.
They said 64 people were missing at sea, while 11 were rescued and taken ashore by the Italian coastguard, along with the body of a woman.
Shakilla Mohammadi, of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) charity, said she heard from survivors that 66 people were unaccounted for, including at least 26 children, some only a few months old.
“Entire families from Afghanistan are presumed dead. They left from Turkey eight days ago and had taken in water for three or four days. They told us they had no life vests and some vessels did not stop to help them,” she said.
04:12
‘We might die along the way’: Pakistanis embark on dangerous illegal journey for a better life
‘We might die along the way’: Pakistanis embark on dangerous illegal journey for a better life
Migrant charities and human rights groups have repeatedly accused Greece’s coastguard and police of illegally preventing arriving migrants from seeking asylum by surreptitiously returning them to Turkish waters. Greece has angrily denied that, arguing its border forces have saved hundreds of thousands of migrants from sinking boats.
The country’s reputation took a further knock in June 2023, when a battered fishing vessel with an estimated 750 people on board sank off southwestern Greece. Only 104 people survived, despite the Greek coastguard having shadowed the vessel for hours, and survivors claimed the trawler sank after a botched attempt by the coastguard to tow it. Greek authorities again denied these allegations.
The man claimed all three were put in a coastguard boat and thrown into the sea, and that the other two men drowned as a result.
The report also quoted a Syrian man who said he was part of a group picked up at sea by the Greek coastguard off Rhodes. He said the survivors were put in life rafts and left adrift in Turkish waters, where several died after one life raft sank before the Turkish coastguard came to pick them up.
Marinakis said “it is wrong to target” the Greek coastguard. “In any case, we monitor every report and investigation, but I repeat: What is mentioned [in the BBC report] is in no case backed up by evidence,” he said.
The incidents confirmed the central Mediterranean’s reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes. According to UN data, more than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing in its waters since 2014.
UN agencies called on EU governments to step up Mediterranean search and rescue efforts and expand legal and safe migration channels, so that migrants “are not forced to risk their lives at sea”.
Earlier this month 11 bodies were recovered from the sea off the coast of Libya, while last year another migrant boat that had set off from Turkey smashed into rocks just off the town of Cutro in Calabria, killing at least 94 people
Additional reporting by Reuters