Hope dims in final day of Greece search

KALAMATA, Greece — The Coast Guard launched its third and final day of a search on Friday in the area where a large fishing boat crammed with migrants sank, with hundreds of passengers missing and feared dead.

The round-the-clock effort continued off the coast of southern Greece despite little hope of finding survivors or bodies after none have been found since Wednesday, when 78 bodies were recovered and 104 people were rescued.

Most of the survivors were being moved on Friday to migrant shelters near Athens from a storage hangar at the southern port of Kalamata, where relatives also gathered to look for loved ones.

Nine people — all men from Egypt, ranging in age from 20 to 40 — have been arrested and detained on allegations of people smuggling and participating in a criminal enterprise. Twenty-seven of the survivors remain hospitalized, officials said.

Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou, citing survivors' accounts, said that passengers in the hold of the fishing boat included woman and children but that the number of missing, believed to be in the hundreds, remains unclear.

The trawler may have carried as many as 750 passengers, including women and children who were likely trapped in the hold, as the vessel overturned and went down early on Wednesday. That could make the sinking one of the deadliest ever in the central Mediterranean Sea.

Meanwhile, Greek authorities were criticized for not acting to rescue the migrants, even though a Coast Guard vessel escorted the trawler for hours and watched helplessly as it sank in minutes. Greek officials argued that the migrants repeatedly refused assistance and insisted on continuing to Italy. Legal experts said that was no excuse.

Relatives of the migrants — who each paid thousands of dollars for passage on the battered vessel — gathered in the southern port city of Kalamata to look for their loved ones.

Kassem Abu Zeed said he caught the first flight from Germany to Greece after realizing that his wife and brother-in-law were aboard the trawler.

"The last time we spoke was eight days ago, and (my wife) told me that she was getting ready to get on the boat," Abu Zeed told The Associated Press, adding that she had paid $5,000 to the smugglers. "And then we all know what happened."

The chances of finding more survivors "are minimal", retired Greek Coast Guard admiral Nikos Spanos told ERT.

Migrant integration

Meanwhile, a joint report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, and the EU said positive progress on the integration of immigrants into the EU and other countries is being made on many fronts, but living conditions remain a challenge.

Countries within the EU and OECD nations are home to 54 million and 141 million foreign-born individuals respectively, representing a 20-percent increase in both cases over the past 10 years.

Social integration for immigrants is an increasing concern and challenging to evaluate, according to the study. It said immigrants participate less in voluntary organizations and have higher trust in police and legal systems in most countries.

However, challenges persist. Immigrants have lower employment rates than native-born individuals, and closing this gap could add 2.4 million workers in the EU alone, it said.

Agencies - China Daily

Jonathan Powell in London contributed to this story.