Shipwreck Pylos, the 19 phone calls that the Greek authorities ignored: “Help, it will be our last night”
Nineteen desperate phone calls in 13 hours. They are those made to the volunteers of the sea rescue from the boat sunk off the Peloponnese with about 750 people on board. A long series of requests for help which, according to reports Republicclashes with the reconstruction of the tragedy made by the Greek authorities.
Since the first sighting at 9.47 on Tuesday, at 2.04, when the vessel sank 47 miles from Pylos, the Greek coastguard has been accused of never attempting to rescue the hundreds of people adrift in the Ionian. Two merchant vessels, the Lucky Sailor and the Faithful Warrior, were asked to limit themselves to supplying the migrants with water and food while the coast guard sloop approached the vessel only at 10.40pm, observing that the boat was illuminated by the photoelectric lights . “We don’t ask for assistance, we just need food and water. We want to go to Italy,” one of the passengers would have said during the contacts with Athens, which began after the notification from the Rome operations center at 11.
In the phone calls recorded by the NGO Alarm Phone and by the activist Nawal Soufi, instead, requests for help follow one another. “I feel this will be our last night,” a man Soufi had spoken to at length during the day said at around 11pm. “There has been no water for days, no food, we are drinking sea water”, the request for help that the activist received from another passenger with whom she has been in contact for a long time. “They told me she died,” Soufi told the newspaper. In the end, 108 survivors, including 9 alleged smugglers of Egyptian origin, were arrested ashore after some survivors allegedly recognized them. Only 78 bodies were recovered, compared to the approximately 750 people who were on board, including a hundred children crammed into the hold.
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