Collision between Greek coastguard vessel, migrant boat kills at least 14

Greece’s coastguard says 26 other people have been rescued from Aegean Sea as search-and-rescue operations continue.

A boat carrying migrants and asylum seekers has collided with a Greek coastguard vessel in the Aegean Sea near the island of Chios, killing at least 14 people, the coastguard says.

The incident occurred around 9pm local time on Tuesday (19:00 GMT) off the coast of Chios’s Mersinidi area, Greece’s Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA) reported.

The coastguard said 26 people were rescued and brought to a hospital in Chios, including 24 migrants and two coastguard officers.

It said it was not immediately clear how many others had been on the speedboat.

Seven children and a pregnant woman were among the injured, Greek media reported.

A search-and-rescue operation involving patrol boats, a helicopter and divers was under way in the area, AMNA said.

Footage shared by Greece’s Ta Nea newspaper appeared to show at least one person being brought from a boat docked next to a jetty into a vehicle with blue flashing lights.

An unnamed coastguard official told the Reuters news agency that the collision occurred after the migrant boat “manoeuvred toward” a coastguard vessel that had instructed it to turn back.

Greece has long been a key transit point for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa ‌and Asia trying to reach Europe.

In 2015 and 2016, Greece was on the front line of a migration crisis, with nearly one million people landing on its islands, including in Chios, from nearby Turkiye.

But arrivals have dropped in recent years as Greece ‌has toughened its asylum seeker and migrant policies, including by tightening border controls and sea ‌patrols.

The country has come under scrutiny for its ⁠treatment of migrants and asylum seekers approaching by sea, including after a shipwreck in 2023 in which hundreds of migrants and refugees died after what witnesses said was the coastguard’s attempt to tow their trawler.

The European Union’s border ‌agency said last year that it was reviewing 12 cases of potential human rights violations by Greece, including some allegations that people seeking asylum were pushed back from Greece’s ‍frontiers.

Greece has denied carrying out human rights violations or pushing asylum seekers from its shores.