Twenty migrants died over the weekend trying to reach the Greek island of Crete, the Greek coast guard said Monday, in two incidents south of the island that also left about 40 people rescued.
The coast guard reported eight bodies on one boat and 12 on another. Maritime police began an emergency rescue late Saturday after a boat sent an alarm signal, with strong winds making conditions difficult, the coast guard said. A boat sailing nearby picked up around 28 survivors and one body, all Sudanese nationals, and transferred them to a police vessel for transport to Crete, authorities said Sunday. During the night from Sunday to Monday, the coast guard located the original vessel with seven more bodies aboard, bringing that boat’s toll to eight.
The second incident was separate. Authorities found 12 bodies on a boat south of the island on Monday and rescued 18 people from it. The coast guard did not say in the statement reviewed by ATN where the vessels departed, or how long they had been at sea. The numbers also do not fully reconcile: 28 survivors on the first boat plus 18 on the second comes to 46, while the coast guard described the total rescued as some 40. ATN is using the coast guard’s own figures for the dead and its rounded figure for the rescued.
Crete has become one of the main entry points into the European Union for migrants leaving Libya, and many of the crossings turn deadly when boats sink or run into trouble, the authorities said.
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The scale of that traffic is well documented. Almost 6,000 people had reached Crete from the Tobruk area of eastern Libya by early June this year, roughly half of all arrivals in Greece. Last year, 19,800 people landed on the island, 47 percent of Greece’s national total. On June 3, the coast guard found 182 people on a rocky stretch of the southern coast between Katarti and Salamia, most of them from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Egypt, and no vessel was found. Crete has overtaken the eastern Aegean islands as Greece’s main entry point.
The death toll has followed. In March, a rubber boat left Tobruk on March 21 and was about 53 nautical miles south of Ierapetra when a Frontex vessel rescued 26 people. Survivors told the coast guard that 22 others died during six days at sea without food or water, and that the bodies were thrown overboard on a smuggler’s orders. Greek authorities arrested two South Sudanese men, aged 19 and 22, as suspected smugglers; they are being investigated for illegal entry and negligent homicide. The two men’s lawyers were not identified in the reports ATN reviewed, and no response from them was available. In December, 17 migrants were found dead on a partially deflated boat southwest of Crete, and two survivors said 15 others had drowned. Their bodies were never recovered.
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Across the Mediterranean, the International Organization for Migration counted 559 deaths in January and February this year, up from 287 in the same period of 2025. Frontex said deaths among people trying to reach EU soil more than doubled over those two months.
The Greek government has responded with deterrence. Parliament passed legislation in July 2025 to suspend the examination of asylum claims from people arriving from North Africa, mostly by sea from Libya to Crete, for three months. Migration Minister Thanos Plevris said then that Greece could extend the suspension if flows rose again. Whether the suspension remains in force now is not stated in the sources ATN has reviewed. Greece has also deployed naval frigates off Libya and trains Libyan coast guard officers on Crete. Plevris told parliament in late May that at least half of those reaching Crete in the first five months came from Bangladesh and Egypt, saying “There is no war there,” and describing them as economic migrants. The Sudanese nationals rescued over the weekend, by contrast, come from a country in armed conflict, which bears on their eligibility for asylum under Plevris’s own distinction between economic migrants and people fleeing war.
Two planned detention camps near Heraklion and Chania are meant to hold new arrivals until their status is determined. Rights groups have criticized Greece over alleged pushbacks, which Athens denies, and the EU border agency has examined 12 cases of possible rights violations.
The Greek coast guard put the weekend toll at 20 dead.
