22 migrants dead off Crete after Libya crossing

South of Crete, Saturday night, 7 November. A boat carrying at least 36 people got into serious trouble about six nautical miles from the island's coast. Eight people died in the water. Twenty-eight Sudanese nationals survived and were transferred by the Greek coast guard to Crete, where two of them were later arrested on suspicion of smuggling.

By Monday morning the coast guard found a second boat drifting further south. Thirteen bodies were on board, 12 men and one woman, nationalities unknown. A passing Moroccan freighter had already pulled 18 people from the same boat. One of them died later at a health center on the island. The combined toll from that crossing: 14 dead.

The two incidents together brought the weekend's death count to 22. That same Monday, Frontex aircraft spotted three more boats below Crete carrying roughly 187 people. Coast guard crews brought them all ashore safely.

Three weeks earlier, twelve migrants died in two speedboat incidents near Lesbos and Samos on the eastern crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands. Deaths in Greek waters have come in clusters through the autumn.

The Libyan coast guard said it intercepted 151 people on November 9 about 80 nautical miles northeast of Sirte. Those rescued included 122 Bangladeshi nationals and 12 Egyptians. Greece's migration minister called the situation a likely crisis in Crete and criticized what he described as a total lack of cooperation from Libyan authorities.

Frontex counted about 31,800 crossings on the central Mediterranean route in the first three quarters of 2026, down 15 percent from the same period in 2025. Officials say arrivals at Crete have accelerated sharply in recent weeks, with roughly 1,700 people landing on the island in the first three days of November.