Thirteen migrants die as boat sinks off Crete, 18 pulled from the sea

At least 13 people died when a boat carrying migrants sank off the Greek island of Crete. The coastguard pulled 18 survivors from the water, all of them Sudanese nationals. Four of those rescued were taken to hospital, among them a toddler.

A Moroccan-flagged container ship was the first to spot the migrant boat, roughly 15 nautical miles (28km) off Crete's coast. One coastguard official told Reuters, speaking anonymously, that the survivors were shivering from the cold. Authorities have not pinned down what killed the passengers.

They believe the boat had been at sea for days and was fighting strong winds as it tried to reach land. Crete is one of the main gateways into Europe for people crossing from the Middle East and North Africa: 22,000 of this year's 86,400 sea arrivals have landed there alone. On the same day, the Greek coastguard rescued another 187 people in three separate incidents off the Greek coast.

UN figures put migrant arrivals in Greece above 37,000 this year, already more than the total for all of 2025. The Greek government has announced plans to handle the surge, including a temporary housing complex near the Cretan capital, Heraklion. Greece sat at the centre of Europe's 2015-16 migration crisis, when nearly a million people reached its islands, most of them from Turkey. Arrivals dropped as border controls tightened, but crossings from Libya have climbed in recent years, driven by people fleeing Sudan's conflict and others chasing work from countries like Bangladesh.