Twelve Dead, 18 Rescued From Migrant Boat Found South of Crete

Greek authorities recovered the bodies of 12 migrants from a boat found sailing south of the island of Crete early on Monday, the coast guard said. A passing Moroccan flagged cargo ship rescued 18 people from the same vessel.

The boat was found about 15 nautical miles (28 kilometres) south of Crete, off the port of Kaloi Limenes on the island's southern coast. The coast guard gave no details about the identities of the people who died or about how they died. Reports citing the coast guard said the weather in the area was good at the time.

Two more boats found nearby

Two other boats were found sailing south of Crete in the same hours. One, carrying about 47 people, was spotted by an aircraft from Frontex, the European Union border agency. The other, with about 40 people on board, was located by a Frontex drone. Everyone on both boats was rescued and taken to a port on the southern coast of Crete, the coast guard said. With the 18 people taken off the first boat, 105 people were rescued across the three operations.

A route under pressure

Greece is one of the main entry points into the European Union for people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In recent months, thousands of people have made the sea crossing from North Africa, usually from Libya to Crete. Others take the shorter but still dangerous route from the Turkish coast to Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, often in inflatable dinghies or other small boats that are not fit for the open sea.

Frontex said in October that the eastern Mediterranean was the busiest route for migrants trying to enter the 27 nation bloc, even though irregular border crossings into the bloc were down by a third so far this year. The agency recorded about 31,800 crossings on the eastern Mediterranean route in the first three quarters of 2026, a fall of 15 percent from the same period last year, and said the corridor from Libya to Crete was the busiest section of that route.

Arrivals on Crete have risen sharply in recent days. Migration and Asylum Minister Thanos Plevris said 1,700 people arrived from Libya in the first three days of November alone, and Greece is preparing for a possible migration crisis on the island as the crossings continue.

Last month, 12 people, including an infant, died when the two boats they were travelling in from Turkey to the islands of Lesbos and Samos capsized.

The coast guard said the survivors from Monday's boat would be taken ashore on Crete. It did not say where the boat had set out from, how long it had been at sea, or how many people were on board in total beyond the 30 accounted for.