Amid international focus on the catastrophic Mediterranean migrant crisis, a series of videos appeared online showing a shipwreck that left at least three dead on Monday.
The incident occurred off the Greek island of Rhodes, and involved a packed boat carrying around 200 migrants, according to police figures.
The footage obtained by local news outlet Rodiaki shows a tragic progression of events, as the migrant boat first appears to be caught powerless along the shore before it begins to break into pieces. Later videos depict the horrific aftermath of the crash and the scrambling rescue effort, with migrants handing off young children to those on land while others desperately hold on to the debris of the collapsing ship.
The video shot before the crash shows the boat rocking in the waters along the shore of Rhodes:
Some time later the migrant boat appears to be dashed apart after it runs aground, with some of the people aboard swimming for the beach:
Another video captures the scene along the beach, with migrants clinging to the wreckage of their boat as flotsam is scattered among the waves:
The Greek coast guard told Reuters that so far 90 people have been rescued from the wreck, and identified the three dead that have been recovered as “a man, a woman and a child.”
This latest shipwreck comes a day after the one of the deadliest incidents of the recent migrant crisis, in which a ship carrying hundreds of people capsized in the Mediterranean. As many as 700 people are feared dead.
As a result of those deaths, European Union leaders will hold an emergency meetingon Thursday to re-evaluate Europe’s response to the surge of migrants predominantly fleeing conflict and repression in the Middle East and North Africa.
If the death toll is confirmed, there will have been more than 1,500 migrant deaths in 2015 from doomed journeys across the Mediterranean, 50 times more than at this point last year, according to The Guardian.
