Coast guards

The Hellenic Coast Guard conducted a rescue operation off the coast of Pylos on Friday, rescuing 49 people stranded on a freight ship. The freight ship, flying under a Belize flag, was located 109 nautical miles southwest of Pylos.

Τhe Hellenic Coast Guard rescued 26 migrants and arrested five of them (aged 23, 22, 23, 21 and 23) in the sea region south of Agrilia on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos on Monday morning.

According to the Coast Guard, one of its vessels conducting a surveillance patrol noticed an inflatable dinghy with passengers within Turkish territorial waters.

Helicopters and a boat evacuated 23 crew members from a car carrier ship off the Netherlands early Wednesday, after a fire killed at least one sailor, the Dutch coastguard said.

The US Coast Guard said late Monday that its search for a missing submersible vessel near the Titanic wreck had been completed for the day, but that a national guard unit and the company operating the five-passenger underwater mission would continue scouring the surface overnight.

As Greece confronts its worst sea disaster in years, questions are mounting about how potentially hundreds of migrants drowned even as their vessel was being shadowed by the Greek coastguard.

At least 78 bodies have been found by rescuers conducting search-and-rescue operations on Wednesday following the capsizing of a fishing vessel off the town of Pylos in the Peloponnese. There are fears that the death toll may still yet increase further. 104 people on board have been rescued, with information suggesting that the people on board may have exceeded 400.

The Shipping Ministry has recently entered into three contracts with Viking Norsafe Life-Saving Equipment Hellas. These contracts involve the acquisition of a total of 31 patrol boats, including 21 conventional boats and 10 inflatable boats, along with three high-speed boats for the Port Authority. The total value of these contracts amounts to 14,372,700 euros.

Five migrants died when a dinghy sank off the coast of southwest Turkey on Saturday, the coastguard said, adding that it had rescued 11 people, while Greece said five more migrants from the same wreck were found on a nearby island.

A new video has been released documenting the incident on January 5 when a Turkish patrol boat harassed a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel and attempted to ram it near the eastern Aegean island of Farmakonisi.

A Coast Guard patrol boat was harassed by a Turkish offshore vessel on Thursday morning off the Dodecanese island of Farmakonisi, the Coast Guard has said.

In a statement, the Coast Guard said its vessel was attempting to identify three Turkish fishing vessels that were fishing within Greek territorial waters, southeast of Farmakonisi.