Greek doctors have been telling journalists about their "frantic efforts" to identify the parents of injured children who were on board the inflatable dinghy that collided with a Greek coast guard boat off the island of Chios overnight into Wednesday (February 4), reported the news agency Associated Press (AP).

The search and rescue operation also continued all day on Wednesday, confirmed the Greek coast guard. A press release on Thursday, however, stated that no more survivors or bodies had been found.

In the aftermath of the incident, two of the pregnant women on board suffered miscarriages and at least three other survivors are in a critical condition as a result of their injuries, reported the news agency Reuters.

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Search for injured parents of children

Talking to local media, hospital doctors spoke about some of those injured, people suffering from broken bones, as well as traumatic abdominal injuries and head injuries.

"On the pediatric side, one problem we had was finding the parents," pediatrician Kirykas Zannikos told AP. The doctor reportedly paused to compose himself as his voice broke and he struggled to fight back tears. The children ranged in age from one to 15, stated AP. Some parents were located among the injured on Wednesday, he said, including one mother who was in intensive care.

Olympia Kouvara, a representative of the hospital staff, described the case of one baby that clung to a medical worker’s arms as staff tried to locate the parents. Despite fears that they were among the dead, the child’s mother was later identified as being one of the surgical ward patients.

"There are some times like these when we also break down," Kouvara told the Politischios local news website.

Vangelis Kirithras, one of the volunteer rescue divers who was at the scene, told Reuters: "What we first saw was an inflatable boat… that was hit with dead bodies inside." The boat is described by rescuers as having been "overloaded."

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Arrest of suspect

As all that was going on, one of the survivors, and now a smuggling suspect, is thought to have been the only Moroccan national on board the eight-meter-long boat. According to reports on Greek state television ERT, the man was identified by the Afghan survivors of the Chios shipwreck. At least 39 passengers are thought to have been traveling on the boat at the time of the collision.

Greek police are expected to charge the Moroccan man with allegedly belonging to a smuggling gang that organized the crossing from Turkey, reported the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini.

Preliminary investigations into the incident are being conducted by the central port authoritiy in Chios. They described the Moroccan national as being 31 years old and having been "identified as the trafficker of the others."

The man was charged with facilitating illegal entry into Greek territory, causing a shipwreck and "disobedience."

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Culpability sometimes difficult to establish

Further updates will be issued as needed, stated the Greek coast guard. In the past, there have been cases where suspected smugglers have been identified by groups on the boat in order to settle scores.

There have also been numerous cases where a migrant might indeed have been piloting the boat, perhaps in return for a cheaper passage, and or because they have more knowledge of the sea than the others, but that doesn’t always mean they are working directly for, or are profiting from, the smugglers’ networks.

Experts who work on these cases, including lawyers and NGOs, have often underlined the fact that the pilots of migrant boats don’t tend to be the biggest link in the smuggling chain, even if they are working for a specific gang.

Most of the influential members of the gang tend to work far away from the actual scenes of crimes and are not picked up by this kind of police operation. However, the Greek authorities have vowed to crack down hard on anyone they suspect of being involved with smuggling, sometimes issuing decades of sentencing if a suspect is found guilty.

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'Unspeakable tragedy'

Vassilis Kikillias, the Minister for Maritime affairs and Island politics in Greece, expressed his "sadness" at the loss of 15 human lives off Chios, calling it an "unspeakable tragedy."

Kikilias called smugglers and traffickers the "enemies of the country," saying they put "human lives in mortal danger – both those unfortunate people and the Coast Guard officers." The minister underlined that the Greek state "will demonstrate zero tolerance towards these networks."

The minister promised that the investigation into the incident would be conducted with "transparency and professionalism."

Migration Minister Thanos Plevris also gave a statement to journalists. According to Reuters, Plevris said: "The smugglers are the ones who killed 15 people; the coast guard rescued 24 people."

In response to a question in parliament about how a dinghy could ram a coast guard vessel, Plevris simply said: "I believe the coast guard." In a statement on Wednesday (February 4), the Greek Coast Guard said that the migrant boat had reversed and rammed the coast guard vessel after being asked to stop by the coast guard and ignoring "light and sound signals" to do so. Both AP and Reuters underlined that the coast guard’s account of the incident "couldn’t be independently verified."

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More arrivals on Rhodes

Also on Thursday, the Greek Coast Guard confirmed that the port authority in Rhodes had located a migrant boat disembarking migrants on a beach and then attempting to escape towards the Turkish coast.

Two Turkish nationals, aged 29 and 41, were stopped on board the boat and arrested for facilitating the entry of foreign nationals into Greece. The two men, say the Greek coast guard, were also identified by the migrants themselves as their smugglers.

A total of 30 migrants were found to have disembarked from the boat, 13 men, eight women and nine minors. The speedboat on which they were traveling has been seized.

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Deaths in the eastern Mediterranean

The latest Chios incident has caused some human rights groups to renew their criticism of the Greek authorities’ handling of migrant arrivals. The group Refugee Support Aegean reportedly accused authorities of "deploying an interception instead of a search and rescue operation," wrote Reuters.

According to the UN Migration Agency IOM’s Missing Migrants project, in January this year, at least 13 deaths were recorded on the eastern Mediterranean route. The last recorded data is from January 30, adding to that the 15 who died in the Chios incident would bring the death toll on that route to at least 28.

IOM writes that compared to other Mediterranean routes, a higher proportion of people’s remains are recovered and brought ashore on this route. Over the years, thousands of people have died on this route, including several hundred children under five. Many of those who died on this route came originally from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

With Reuters and AP

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