People rescued after migrant boat sinks off Greece

The Greek coast guard said 90 people ‒ 52 men, 11 women and 27 children ‒ were rescued overnight Thursday and early Friday from a rocky islet some 235 kilometers (145 miles) south of Athens, near the remote island of Antikythera.

The coast guard released a video of the rescue operation. It showed people being put into life rafts and transferred to a patrol boat.

The survivors were being brought to the port of Piraeus, near Athens.

Coast guard divers searched the hull of a submerged sailboat for passengers possibly trapped inside Friday after the vessel hit rocks and sank off the coast of southern Greece, leading to the deaths of at least 11 people.

Smugglers based in Turkey increasingly have packed sailboats with migrants and refugees and sent them across the Mediterranean Sea toward Italy, avoiding the heavily patrolled Greek islands.

Greece is a popular entry point into the European Union for people fleeing conflict and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But arrivals dropped sharply in the last two years after Greece extended a wall at the Turkish border and began intercepting inbound boats carrying migrants and refugees‒ a tactic criticized by human rights groups.

More than 116,000 asylum-seekers crossed the Mediterranean to reach EU countries this year as of Dec. 19, according to UNHCR.

The agency said 55% traveled illegally to Italy, 35% to Spain, and 7% to Greece, with the remainder heading to Malta and Cyprus.