Migrant Boat Sinks Near Gavdos, 25 Missing

A boat carrying at least 77 people sank on Sunday evening, September 13, roughly 38 nautical miles south of the island of Gavdos, in the Libyan Sea, the Greek coast guard said. For Serbia, an EU candidate country that sits along the corridor migrants follow toward central Europe after landing in Greece, every new shipwreck on this route carries the risk of added pressure further up the Balkans, even though the accident itself does not immediately change the numbers at the land border.

The search continued through the night, and authorities released their first estimates this morning, figures that vary from source to source. The Chinese news agency Xinhua, citing Greek state broadcaster ERT, reports that 52 people were rescued while at least 25 remain missing, adding that one person was pulled from the water unconscious. Arab News, citing an AFP report, writes that one person has been confirmed dead and that the Greek coast guard said 51 people were rescued. Sweden Herald, citing AFP and the newspaper Kathimerini, puts the number rescued at around 50. All three agencies agree that, according to survivors themselves, at least 77 people had been aboard the boat.

According to Xinhua and Arab News, the search involved Greek coast guard vessels and ships from Frontex, the European Union’s border and coast guard agency, as well as a Greek air force helicopter and a Frontex aircraft. Sweden Herald, citing Kathimerini, reports that six vessels took part in the operation in total, two of them belonging to Frontex. According to a coast guard spokesperson, the survivors were picked up by two ships that happened to be in the area.

“Fifty-one people were pulled from the water by two vessels that happened to be in the area,” a Greek coast guard spokesperson told AFP, as reported by Arab News, adding that survivors said 77 people had been aboard the boat when it sank.

As of this morning, Greek authorities had not released the passengers’ nationalities or the exact port of departure. Based on established patterns along this route, boats from North Africa most often set out from the Libyan coast. Gavdos, Greece’s southernmost inhabited island, and nearby Crete lie roughly 320 kilometers from Libya and have become, in recent years, the main entry point for asylum seekers trying to reach the European Union by sea.

Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris has pursued a policy he himself describes as strict toward new arrivals, and Athens has spent recent months in talks with Germany and several other EU member states about setting up so called return centers outside the bloc, where migrant claims would be processed before entry into EU territory. Arab News, citing data from the Greek migration agency published in late August by the ANA news agency, reports that migrant arrivals in Greece fell from around 61,000 in the year to August 2025 to 42,000 over the following twelve months, a drop of about 31 percent.

That decline in arrivals to Greece does not mean less pressure on the land route through the Balkans, along which Serbia has been a transit country for more than a decade. Interior ministers from the Western Balkan countries regularly exchange data with Frontex precisely because the numbers at sea and the numbers at land border crossings do not necessarily move at the same pace, and the fall months are traditionally when activity on the route north picks up.

As of this writing, Greek authorities had not said whether the search for the missing near Gavdos had ended or was still underway.