Although the search for possible survivors continues this Friday after the sinking of a ship with immigrants off the coast of Greece, hopes of finding more castaways alive in a tragedy that may have left hundreds dead are fading. “At this point, it is extremely difficult for someone to be found alive,” a Coast Guard spokeswoman told EFE.

The operations continued throughout the night without yielding any results, so the official balance remains that of at least 78 dead and 104 rescued, all male, including eight minors. According to some local media, between 500 and 700 immigrants were traveling aboard the 30-meter-long boat. In the hold of the old fishing boat there were around 100 children and many womenaccording to testimonies from the survivors collected by the local press.

Currently, five vessels, including a Navy frigate and a helicopter, continue operations in the area, which are hampered by strong winds. According to the testimonies of those rescued reported by the Greek media, the boat had departed from Egypt, stopped in eastern Libya and then continued on to Italy. Early Wednesday morning she sank southwest of the Greek Peloponnese peninsula after capsizing.

The authorities nine people of Egyptian nationality were arrested the day before among those rescued, who face charges of forming a criminal organization for the smuggling of immigrants, cause a shipwreck and put lives in danger. The rest of the rescued are being transferred from the Peloponnese port city of Kalamata to the Malakasa reception camp outside Athens to be identified. The eight minors will then be transferred to state centers for children, according to the local press.

The Greek Coast Guard It was harshly criticized this Thursday by the media and international organizations, as well as by NGOs, for not intervening from the first moment it spotted the overloaded vessel on Tuesday. According to Nikos Alexíu, a coast guard spokesman, on Skai private television, “a sudden intervention to rescue a ship with so many people could produce a sudden change in load, which would cause the ship to sink”. “We stayed close in case they needed us to save them and that’s what we did,” she stressed.

Thursday, thousands of people demonstrated throughout Greece in protest of the migration policies of the European Union and the Greek governments, which, according to their complaints, have turned the bloc into a “fortress” and the Mediterranean into “a sea of ​​the dead”.