Peloponnese

Authorities in the port city of Kalamata have made nine arrests following the sinking of a fishing boat southwest of the Peloponnese that killed at least 78 migrants, a Shipping Ministry source has said.

All those arrested, who are said to be from Egypt, will face charges of forming a criminal organization and illegal migrant trafficking.

The head of the EU border agency Frontex has said the Greek authorities "did their upmost to save lives" in Wednesday's sinking of a ship crammed with migrants that went down off the coast of Pylos, in the Peloponnese.

Speaking from the nearby city of Kalamata, Frontex Executive Director Hans Leijtens said the sinking was "a horrible incident, any way you look at it."

The migrants rescued from the deadly boat sinking off the coast of southwestern Peloponnese will be transferred to the Reception and Identification Center in Malakassa, in East Attica, the Migration Ministry said on Wednesday.

The President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou departed on Wednesday for Kalamata, where there are more than 100 migrants rescued from a shipwrecked fishing boat. The boat was carrying an unknown number of migrants when it capsized in international waters some 47 nautical miles from the Peloponnese coast, near the town of Pylos.

Greece on Thursday pursued a grim search for survivors a day after a fishing boat overloaded with migrants capsized and sank in the Ionian Sea, with the number of victims feared to reach into the hundreds.

As relatives in the migrants' home countries frantically sought details of their loved ones, the coastguard said 78 bodies had been recovered so far.

At least 17 people have drowned after a fishing boat, carrying dozens of migrants, capsized and sank off the southern coast of Greece in the early hours of Wednesday, according to coast guard officials who spoke to Kathimerini.

The Megalopolis Basin in the Peloponnese was among the southernmost ecological refuges in Europe during the glacial periods of the Middle Pleistocene, according to the results of a five-year program of surface and geoarchaeological research recently completed by the Culture Ministry and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA).

A mixed jury court in Patras has handed a man four life sentences after convicting him of the murder of four members of the same family in March 2022.

In a case that shocked the country, a 32-year-old father, a 37-year-old mother and their two children, aged 1.5 and 2.5, were found dead in their home in Andravida, a village in the Peloponnese region of Ilia.

A cynic would say that it's just another of the many online arguments that kick off every so often: The logos of Levi's, McDonalds, Apple, Marlboro and other American corporate giants that make up part of the set in the Greek National Opera's production of "Madama Butterfly" which is currently on at the Herod Atticus Theater have sparked outrage on social media.

A two-year-old girl who went missing on Monday in the area of Pyrgos, Peloponnese, was found dead by search and rescue units, state run broadcaster ERT reported on Tuesday.

The body of the girl was found in an irrigation canal near a military camp. Her death is attributed to drowning, the report said.