This photograph, taken on Jan. 10, 2024, shows an inflatable boat stranded on the rocky shores of Agios Georgios, east of the Greek island of Lesbos, in the Aegean Sea. (Credit: Manolis Lagoutaris/File photo/AFP)
BEIRUT — Four Palestinian refugees from the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon were reported missing Tuesday morning. According to our correspondent in the region, they were on board a vessel that sank off the coast of Greece. Five other Palestinians from other camps in Lebanon, such as al-Bass and Taalabaya, are also believed to have been on board, as well as Syrian migrants.
Since then, concern has gripped the Nahr al-Bared camp: families remain without news of their loved ones. The vessel is believed to have carried 18 migrants in total and set out to sea in the middle of last week, according to our correspondent.
Their disappearance occurred as the Greek port police announced Monday that 12 migrants had died Monday off the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos in the Aegean Sea, including six after a collision with a coast guard vessel. It was not immediately possible to determine whether the migrants who left Lebanon were on those vessels or others, as the nationality of the deceased and survivors had not been specified by the port authorities. An official from the Greek coast guard press service stated that a "migrant speedboat collided on the left side of the port police launch" Monday morning, 3.5 nautical miles off the island of Lesbos, facing the Turkish coast. Among the six people found dead in the water were an infant, four women and a man. Eight people survived, according to the same official. Greek media reported that the survivors were hospitalized for initial treatment in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. A shipwreck also took place at dawn on Monday, 3.7 nautical miles off the coast of Samos, according to the same source. "The migrant vessel capsized and six people, five men and one woman, were recovered dead," the official said. Fourteen people, including an alleged Iranian smuggler, survived, she added.
Frequent accidents
Fatal accidents involving migrant vessels attempting to reach the northern and eastern Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as Crete, entry points to the European Union, are frequent. At least 15 migrants died in February off the Greek island of Chios in a collision between their boat and a Greek coast guard patrol boat.
In September, one person died and 25 others went missing in a migrant shipwreck off the island of Gavdos, near Crete.
"The smugglers are putting the migrants in grave danger," denounced Thanos Plevris, minister of migration and asylum, on public channel Ertnews, emphasizing that pressures are mounting at the borders ahead of winter. A staunch supporter of a very strict migration policy, this former far-right lawmaker praised the work done by the Greek coast guard. "They are doing everything they can to save people while protecting our borders," he said.
Greece is among five European Union countries, along with Austria, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, that are currently working to create detention centers in Africa to which rejected asylum-seekers would be sent. However, this initiative is not unanimously backed among the 27 member states. French President Emmanuel Macron has called it ineffective and inconsistent with EU values.
EU countries received some 332,000 applications for international protection in the first half of 2026, a 17% drop compared to a year earlier, marking the lowest number in five years, according to the EU Agency for Asylum (EUAA).
