Greek coastguard launches search operation to find dozens of missing migrants with assistance from an Italian frigate, helicopters.
Five people died after a migrant boat sank off Crete, Greece’s coastguard said, leaving 40 people reportedly missing while 39 survivors were rescued.
The boat, which capsised early Saturday, sank 12 nautical miles southwest of the island, according to ERTNEWS, which reported the 40 missing.
A large rescue operation involving vessels and aircraft was under way in the sea south of the island of Gavdos, south of Crete, after the boat capsised shortly after midnight, the coastguard said.
Earlier, the coastguard said they recovered the body of one person on Saturday morning. Later in the afternoon, the coastguard told AFP news agency the number of people found dead had risen to five.
In separate incidents on Saturday, a Malta-flagged cargo vessel rescued 47 migrants from a boat sailing about 40 nautical miles (74km) off Gavdos, while a tanker rescued another 88 people some 28 nautical miles (52km) off the island.
According to initial information, coastguard officials believe the boats left together from Libya.
Greece received nearly one million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015-2016, most of whom took the dangerous route of crossing the sea on inflatable dinghies.
Similar shipwrecks off Crete and Gavdos, which are relatively isolated in the central Mediterranean, have increased over the past year.
According to the Ministry of Migration, Greece has seen a 25-percent increase this year in the number of people entering, fleeing war and poverty, with a 30-percent increase to Rhodes and the southeast Aegean.
Several similar deadly accidents have struck in recent weeks.
In late November, eight people, six of them minors, died north of the island of Samos, on a route frequently used by people smugglers.
According to United Nations statistics, which are based largely on survivor accounts, 1,536 people have died or gone missing and are presumed dead in the central Mediterranean so far this year.
The International Organization for Migration said more than 30,309 refugees have died in the Mediterranean in the past decade, including more than 3,000 last year.
