The Greek Coast Guard said on Monday that three bodies had been recovered while searching for survivors of the sinking of a refugee ship off the coast of Greece, in which at least 78 people died.
• Also read: Migrant shipwreck: 9 Egyptians suspected of being smugglers arrested in Greece
• Also read: Greece: After the sinking of a refugee boat, research continues
• Also read: Greece: 78 dead when refugee boat sinks
The three bodies “are in an advanced state of decomposition” and it is impossible to determine their sex, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said.
They were fished out of the western Peloponnese peninsula, in the area where an old trawler carrying hundreds of migrants was wrecked on Wednesday morning, the spokeswoman told AFP.
However, when questioned, the Coast Guard could not confirm that the three bodies recovered were migrants who died in the sinking.
According to a balance sheet by the Greek authorities on Wednesday, only 104 people have been rescued so far, including 47 Syrians, 43 Egyptians, 12 Pakistanis and two Palestinians.
Many relatives of migrants who were on board the wrecked boat have traveled to Greece in recent days to look for news about the victims.
More than 140 Syrians were on board and many of them are missing, officials said AFP news agency.
A right-wing candidate for the next parliamentary elections was expelled from his New Democracy party (ND of former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis) on Friday evening for making statements deemed racist after the shipwreck off Pylos (south).
While deploring the “tragic” loss of migrants, including “children”, in Mediterranean waters, the parliamentary candidate under the label ND Spilios Kriketos said in an interview on YouTube on Thursday that Greece “cannot tolerate any more migrants” and blamed most of them them against the theft channel.
These remarks caused an outcry. The largest left-wing opposition party, Syriza, called it “a racist lecture” and called on the ND to expel Spilios Kriketos.
Experts and NGOs have questioned the Greek Coast Guard, who they believe should have intervened earlier and rescued the ship.
Media and NGOs have repeatedly accused Greece of carrying out “illegal” pushbacks of migrants in the Aegean Sea, but criticism has been dismissed by the government.
For the past four years, Prime Minister and New Democracy (ND) leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis has led a security force crackdown marked by border closures to combat what he sees as an “invasion” by migrants since neighboring Turkey , and an increase in police violence.