On Saturday, the Greek Coast Guard rescued dozens of migrants whose boat had capsized near the island of Samos.
In the most recent rescue operation in a series of incidents, the Greek Air Force’s Super Puma helicopter saved two migrants stranded out at sea west of Samos on October 26th. The video was released on Sunday.
The mission was conducted after the Samos Port Authority received information from the Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) of the Greek Coast Guard about individuals in distress near Plaka Beach.
The rescue effort involved a coordinated response from multiple agencies which deal with migrant flows.
An offshore vessel, a rescue boat, and a Coast Guard patrol boat were deployed in the broader area, along with a FRONTEX force vessel and a Greek Rescue Team speedboat.
FRONTEX is the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders.
The Super Puma helicopter played a crucial role in rescuing the unfortunate individuals, retrieving one person from the sea and another from a rocky area before transporting them to the island of Chios, where they were handed over to local police authorities.
In addition to these two individuals, 38 more people were rescued in the same operation. Coast Guard vessels picked up 26 migrants, while the remaining 12 were saved by personnel from the fire service, police department, and Karlovasi Port Authority.
All 38 rescued individuals were transferred to the Samos Police Department for processing.
Not the first time Greek Coast Guard saves migrants at sea
This rescue operation is part of numerous migrant arrivals and rescue efforts in Greek waters. In a separate incident in September, Greek authorities rescued more than 150 migrants in three different operations in the Aegean Sea within a 24-hour period.
One of these operations involved the recovery of a woman’s body from the sea near Kos, where a boat carrying sixteen migrants had capsized. The remaining fifteen individuals were safely rescued and transported to the island’s port.
In another incident, a wooden boat with 78 people on board was located 23 nautical miles south of Gavdos, Greece’s southernmost island. These migrants were picked up by a lifeboat and taken to the port of Souda on Crete.
The third operation involved a sailing boat carrying 70 migrants, spotted east of the Messinian Gulf in the southern Peloponnese.
According to data from the Greek Coast Guard, in August 2024, 2,840 migrants were arrested for illegal entry into Greece. Of these, nineteen were located on Greek territory and destined for other EU member-states.