A German-managed ship underway in the Mediterranean changed course to bring about 60 distressed migrants to safety.
All help, however, came too late for a young girl who died while being airlifted to Greece.
The 14,400-dwt tweendecker BBC Pearl (built 2010), owned by Briese Schiffahrt, arrived at Kales Limenes in Crete early on Wednesday, Greek coastguards said.
Sixty-one would-be migrants disembarked from the vessel, which had rescued them on Tuesday from their drifting boat in high seas off Crete.
On the same day, a Greek Navy helicopter flew out to the BBC Pearl about 80 km (50 miles) south of the island to evacuate an unconscious four-year-old girl and her mother.
Greek doctors examining the girl later in the day at a hospital on Crete, however, pronounced her dead.
One-third of the migrants rescued by the BBC Pearl were under-age, the Greek coastguard said without revealing their nationalities.
Two of them are in hospital in the town of Heraclion.
“We’re glad that we could assist in this humanitarian emergency,” a Briese manager told TradeWinds. The BBC Pearl has resumed its voyage towards the Suez Canal with a load of project cargo on board.
Thousands of undocumented migrants or refugees from the Middle East and North Africa attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing each year to reach Europe.
Many of them undertake the journey in makeshift, unseaworthy boats.
Some are rescued by commercial ships underway in the area. Hundreds, however, perish during the journey.
According to United Nations figures released in June, 123,300 individual crossings were reported in the Mediterranean last year. That was up from 95,800 in 2020 but considerably below the one million who made the journey in 2015 — the peak year.
“Despite the lower numbers of crossings, the death toll has seen a steep rise,” according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which counted more than 3,200 dead or missing people last year on the Mediterranean and north-west African maritime routes.
That compares with 1,881 dead in 2020, 1,510 in 2019 and at least 2,277 in 2018.
