The coast guard rescued another 18 people from the boat about 15 nautical miles off the port of Kaloi Limenes and dozens of others in two other incidents off Crete.
A coast guard official said, adding that they will all be taken ashore. Greece, for years a favored gateway to Europe for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, was at the front line of Europe’s migration crisis in 2015-2016 and nearly 1 million people landed on its islands, mainly from Turkiye.
Total migrant arrivals have ebbed since as Athens have bolstered sea and border patrols but sea arrivals from northeastern Libya of migrants trying to cross to Europe through Crete have surged.
According to the coast guard account reported by The Times of Israel, the first of the two incidents began late on Saturday, when a boat sent out an alarm signal. Maritime police mounted an emergency rescue operation, and the coast guard said strong winds had made conditions at sea difficult.
A different boat that happened to be sailing in the area picked up around 28 survivors and one body. Greek authorities said on Sunday that all of those people were Sudanese nationals. They were moved onto a police vessel and brought to Crete. Later that night, the coast guard located the boat the group had been travelling on and found seven more bodies aboard, which accounts for the eight deaths attributed to that vessel.
The boat carrying the 12 bodies was described as a separate case. The coast guard said it was found south of the island and that 18 people on board were rescued. Neither report gives the nationalities of the people on that boat, or says where either vessel had set out from.
Crete is a large Greek island in the south of the country, in the Mediterranean Sea. Greek authorities, as quoted by The Times of Israel, describe it as having become a main destination for migrants trying to get into the European Union. Because Greece is an EU member state, arriving on one of its islands puts migrants on EU territory.
The Times of Israel illustrated its report with an earlier photograph, dated August 19, 2025, of migrants who had recently landed and were being kept under guard in a makeshift shelter at Agia, a village close to the city of Chania on Crete. The image indicates that arrivals on the island, and the facilities set up to hold new arrivals, were already a feature of the situation before this weekend's deaths.
Illustration of an empty oil tanker riding high on calm Gulf water at dawn, with a distant port shoreline on the horizon.Illustration
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Both accounts rest on the Greek coast guard and on statements from Greek authorities. Neither Israeli outlet reported from the scene. Ynet's item was a short headline alert on its Telegram channel, written in Hebrew, which stated that 12 bodies had been located on a migrant boat south of Crete and pointed readers to a fuller story on its website. The Times of Israel item was an entry in its live news blog, in English, and gave the fuller picture of both incidents, including the survivor figures and the account of the rescue operation.
The two reports agree on the central fact of 12 bodies found on a boat south of Crete. Ynet's alert mentions only that boat; it does not refer to the second incident or to the overall toll of 20.