Five people from the Syrian town Kobani are known to have survived the disaster where a fishing vessel carrying some 750 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean, daily Özgür Politika reported.
There were 35 known Kobani residents on the boat that sank off the coast of Pylos, Greece on 15 June. Eleven people are known to have died out of the 82 people whose bodies have been recovered. There are 104 survivors, none of whom are the women and around 100 children rumoured to be locked in the hold of the ship.
Survivors spent at least three hours in the water before Greek coastguard rescued them, according to witness accounts.
One survivor from Pakistan has decided to go back to the country, while 41 others have been registered as asylum seekers, and issued temporary residence permits of six months, Malakasa Camp Secretary General Manos Logothetis said.
While rescue efforts continue, Greek authorities have announced that they will not be able to retrieve the shipwreck that lies 4 km deep, according to Özgür Politika.
The coastguard has been under fire for failing to help the migrants, and maintain that the crew did not accept their offer to help.
However, according to UN Migration Agency’s Mediterranean office Spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo, authorities were obligated to launch a rescue operation regardless, as all boats carrying migrants “are to be considered unfit for navigation”, as they may appear to have no issues, but they can still sink in a matter of minutes.
The disaster is the deadlies since some thousand migrants lost their lives in a capsizing boat off the coast of Libya in 2015.
Out of € 800 million allocated to Greece for border management, only € 600,000 (0.07 percent) was used for search and rescue, Greece-based journalism collective Solomon reported.
Twenty MEPs, including from Greek left-wing party Syriza, have written to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Parliament President Roberta Metzola and EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson to demand an independent investigation into the disaster, Television Without Borders news website reported.
According to EU border agency Frontex, Greek authorities had not replied to an offer to send Frontex aircraft to the vessel while it was still in distress.
