On 27 March 2009, at least one boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy capsized. The boat is believed to have been carrying 250 migrants from Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine and Nigeria. A rescue attempt involving the Italian and Libyan navies rescued 21 survivors from the boat and retrieved 21 bodies. A further 77 bodies subsequently washed up on the shores of Libya before rescue efforts were called off. Two other boats also went missing between Libya and Italy, carrying around 250 more people between them. A fourth boat, carrying 350 people, was rescued by an Italian merchant ship on 29 March in the same area of sea.
The 2009 Turks and Caicos Islands migrant shipwreck was the loss of a motorless boat carrying Haitian migrants near the British Turks and Caicos Islands in the northern West Indies, late on the night of 26 July 2009. Sixty-five persons went missing; earlier figures of 79 missing migrants were reduced as bodies were recovered. After 2 days at least fifteen corpses had been located.
The 2009 Sierra Leone ferry accident occurred on 8 September 2009 off the coast of Sierra Leone, when a wooden Teh Teh ferry travelling from Shenge village to Tombo sank during a storm. At least 90 people to date have been confirmed dead, and over 100 others have been listed as "missing". So far, only 39 survivors have been rescued. Several of the passengers were children who had been on holiday, though the official passenger manifest did not include them. An attempted rescue operation ended on 11 September. The sinking is the worst such accident in Sierra Leone since 2002, when a boatful of refugees capsized. The Xinhua News Agency in China has likened the disaster to other major marine accidents in recent years.
The December 2007 Seferihisar, Turkey migrant boat disaster occurred in the night of 8 December 2007 when a 15-meter dinghy boat carrying illegal migrants who were trying to reach the island of Chios, Greece, capsized due to bad sea conditions off the coast of Seferihisar, İzmir Province, western Turkey, resulting in forty to sixty deaths, sources varying on the exact number of casualties, among the boat's occupants. It is the single largest maritime incident in terms of loss of lives and involving migrants in the Aegean Sea.
On 6 April 2011, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank 32 nautical miles south of Lampedusa and 96 nautical miles southwest of Malta. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of an initial 48 survivors and the retrieval of 20 bodies. A fishing boat picked up an additional three survivors. At least a further 130 people were not found after the shipwreck.
On 3 October 2013, a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was reported that the boat had sailed from Misrata, Libya, but that many of the migrants were originally from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana. An emergency response involving the Italian Coast Guard resulted in the rescue of 155 survivors. On 12 October it was reported that the confirmed death toll after searching the boat was 359, but that further bodies were still missing; a figure of "more than 360" deaths was later reported.
This is a timeline of the European migrant crisis of 2015 and 2016.
On November 3, 2016, around 240 people were killed in two migrant boat capsizing incidents off the coast of Libya. Twenty-nine people survived the first wreck, with about 120 deaths reported. Only two people survived the second wreck, and again around 120 deaths were reported. Another one hundred people are believed to have drowned off the coast when their boat sank after they were abandoned off Libya without a motor on 17 November. Twenty-seven survivors have been transported to Italy. An estimated 4,700 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in 2016.
Proactiva Open Arms (POA) is a Spanish NGO devoted to search and rescue (SAR) at sea. Set up in October 2015, it carried out its first rescue action that same month from its base on the Greek island of Lesbos.
On 24 November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the English Channel causing the deaths of 27 of the 30 people on board. It is believed to be the deadliest incident in the English Channel since the International Organization for Migration began collecting data in 2014.
On 13 December 2021, one person was killed in an incident in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden. Two vessels collided of which one capsized. Two people have been detained.
On 22 September, 2022, a ship carrying migrants escaping Lebanon sank off the coast of Tartus, Syria. The victims, intending to escape the Lebanese liquidity crisis, are estimated to number around 150 people, hailing from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. It has been described as one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean in recent years.
Events in the year 2023 in Greece.
On 26 February 2023, a boat carrying migrants sank amidst harsh weather conditions while trying to land on the coast of Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort village near the town of Crotone in the region of Calabria in Southern Italy. The boat was carrying about 200 migrants when it sank, of whom at least 94 died, including at least 35 children. Eighty-one people survived.
On 14 June 2023, a fishing boat smuggling migrants sank in international waters in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece. The boat, which left Tobruk, Libya, on 10 June, carried an estimated 400 to 750 migrants. The search and rescue effort by Greek authorities rescued 104 survivors including Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans, and Palestinians, and recovered 82 bodies, with hundreds more missing and presumed dead.
