Refugee boat that sank near Greece, had 100 children in the cargo

It is feared that about 100 children were in the cargo -of -freight dream of a large refugee boat that went down off the coast of Greece, which will probably be considered one of the worst refugee strags in the Mediterranean for years.

A survivor of the shipwreck told the medical staff that he saw 100 children in the hold of the former fishing vehicle, which captured in the early morning of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off the south coast of Greece.

"The fishing boat was 25 to 30 meters long." The deck was full of people and we assume that the interior was just as full, "said Nikolaos Alexiou, a spokesman for the coast guard, Greek television.

Sometimes smugglers block people in the hold of boats to keep control of their human load.

The boat was on the way from the Libyan port Tobruk to Italy when his engine failed and asylum seekers reported the help of the Greek authorities.

The confirmed number of fatalities in the tragedy is 79, but the authorities assume that up to 750 people were on board, and assume that the number of fatalities will increase.

savior searched the area on Thursday, in which the boat went down, about 50 miles from the coastal city of Pylos.

about 100 survivors, mostly men from Syria, Pakistan and Egypt, were brought ashore.

The corpses of the victims were transferred to a cemetery near Athens for DNA tests.

The charity organization Save the Children said in a statement: "According to the first statements by survivors, there were 100 children in the cargo home, whereby the number of fatalities is expected to increase."

A Brit fears that some of his relatives are missing from the catastrophe.

aftab Khan from Wolverhampton told Sky News in the port of Kalamata that three of his cousins ​​were on board the boat.

one was found alive, but the other two still have to be found.

"We don't know where they are at the moment. We just try to find it out," he said.

The Greek authorities said that migrants repeatedly tried to reject help with the reason that they wanted to achieve help with the reason that they wanted to achieve Italy on the deck of the fishing boat.

"If you are faced with such a situation ... you have to be very careful in your actions," said Mr. Alexiou.

"On such a ship with so many people on board you cannot carry out a violent redirection ... without any cooperation."

civil servants said the chances of lifting the boat were low because it sank in such deep water.

Greece has become the "protective shield of Europe"

The ship's accident is considered the deadliest in Greek waters for several years.

In February of this year, almost 100 people died when their ship crashed into rocks on the coast of Calabria in the extreme south of Italy.

alarm Phone, a volunteer organization that supports rescue campaigns, said that there are good reasons for trying to try to get to Italy.

"This is because people on the run from the terrible and systematic pushback practices of the Greek authorities know that are sanctioned by the EU," they said.

"Greece has become the 'protective shield of Europe', as Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, once stated, and violently discard people on the flight," they added.

According to the United Nations, around 20,000 migrants and refugees have been killed in the central Mediterranean since 2014, which makes it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world. Greece has proclaimed a three -day grief because of the tragedy.