Migrant Boat Runs Aground Off Greek Island; Hundreds Feared Dead
1:10 p.m. (1110 GMT; 7:10 a.m. EDT) The International Organization for Migration says its Rome office has received a distress call from international waters in the Mediterranean about three boats in need of help.
The IOM says the caller reported 300 people on his boat with about 20 fatalities and said the boat was sinking. The caller provided no information on the other boats.
The IOM had no additional details, including the location of the distress call.
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12:15 a.m. (1015 GMT; 6:15 a.m. EDT)
Video footage and photos posted by the local news website Rodiaki of the grounding of a migrantboat off the coast of the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday show a large, wooden double-masted boat, people packed on board, just meters away from the island.
The vessel rocks wildly in the waves and passengers are seen in a photo jumping into the sea and swimming toward land.
In another video, about a dozen migrantssit on a floating piece of wreckage pushed toward the shore. Coast Guard officers and passers-by jump into the waves to rescue the migrants, including a young child wearing a lifejacket.
At least three people are known to have died in the incident.
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11:55 a.m. (0955 GMT; 5:55 a.m. EDT)
An international aid agency spokeswoman has compared the scale of deaths in recent shipwrecks to the death toll in the sinking of the Titanic luxury liner more than a century ago.
Sarah Tyler, a spokeswoman for Save the Children in Catania, Sicily, said more than 1,000 people have died in the waters of the Mediterranean, adding "that is almost as many as died in the Titanic, and 31 times the number who died when the Costa Concordia sank."
One survivor's account has put at up to 950 the number of people on board the smuggler's boat that sank off the coast of Libya this weekend, with only a handful rescued. Last week more than 400 people died or went missing in another shipwreck.
The Bangladeshi survivor said many of the passengers were below deck and trapped inside when the boat sank.
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11:40 a.m. (0940 GMT; 5:45 a.m. EDT)
The Greek coast guard says it is unclear how or why a boat carrying migrantsran ashore off the coast of the island of Rhodes, killing at least three people.
It says it received an emergency call from the boat, which is a wooden gulet with a mast, at at 10:45 am local time (0745 GMT
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11:15 a.m. (0915 GMT; 5:15 a.m. EDT)
Greek authorities say at least three people have died, including a child, after a wooden boat carrying dozens of migrants from the Turkish shore ran aground off the eastern Aegean island of Rhodes.
The Coast Guard says at least 83 people were on the boat, which ran aground Monday. Twenty-three people were transported to a hospital for first aid treatment and the others were taken to the local police station. It was unclear what the total number of people on board was, and authorities say a search and rescue operation is ongoing in the area to locate more potential survivors.
The nationalities of the migrants was not immediately known. Tens of thousands of migrants attempt to enter the European Union through Greece each year.
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10:15 a.m. (0815 GMT; 4:15. a.m. EDT)
European Union president Latvia is calling on the EU's executive arm to urgently propose new measures to beef up Europe's border agency to respond to the migrant emergency in the Mediterranean.
Latvian Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis said Monday that the presidency "is committed to facilitate swift adoption of short-term emergency measures once they are proposed."
Rescuers are combing the waters of the Mediterranean off Libya where hundreds of migrants are thought to have drowned when their boat overturned.
EU foreign and interior ministers are to hold emergency talks in Luxembourg on the crisis later on Monday.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the ministers would discuss whether the 28 EU leaders should hold an emergency summit this week.
(Story by: The Associated Press)
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