Mourning and anger for the victims of the shipwreck tragedy off Pylos with Coast Guard officers expressing fears that we may never know the exact number of people on board the tragic ship, even after taking statements from survivors.

According to what the press representative of the Coast Guard, Nikos Alexiou, told SKAI, the information about about 700 people on board the fatal boat was given to the Italian Coast Guard by an activist who notified that the fishing boat was sailing towards Italy. As Mr. Alexiou said, the process of taking depositions will continue in order to cross-reference as many elements as possible.

Testimony for 100 children in the holds

Shocking at the same time are the testimonies of survivors who told doctors at the Kalamata hospital that there were around 100 children in the holds of the boat which sank in the deepest part of the Mediterranean.

Shocked, the doctor and Director of the Cardiology Clinic of Kalamata Hospital, Manolis Makaris, said yesterday: “I was moved when I gave my mobile phone so they could talk to their family in Egypt.”

The doctor then spoke about the possibility that there were children and women in the hold: “I asked a patient and he spoke of a large number of children, about 100.”

They are looking for their own people with photos

As Mr. Makaris stated, 30 immigrants are being treated at the Kalamata hospital and their condition is relatively good.

“Their problems are under control. Some have pneumonia, some others have total paralysis, some others have various problems because they got aspiration pneumonia. Their problems are to be expected, with what people have drawn. Mainly their psychological problem is the big problem and what they are anxiously asking is to communicate with their relatives”, Mr. Makaris pointed out.

He described as shocking the messages he receives on his mobile phone from relatives who are searching on board the fishing boat. Some send him pictures and provide information asking him if he has seen the relative they are looking for. At the same time, he receives constant calls from unknown numbers calling from countries such as Syria and Pakistan, from people who are worried about the fate of their own. “They’ve sent me pictures” asking “if we’ve seen them.”

“People were shocked, we were looking at their medical issue, we were trying to communicate through a mobile app because they didn’t speak any other language than Arabic, so we were asking them to give us some information through the app if they are in pain, if they are short of breath, how they feel, if they have colds . Some had hypothermia, but overall their condition is stable and controlled,” he said, adding that interpreters who know Arabic are urgently needed to be sent to communicate with people.

For their part, a volunteer rescuer of the Hellenic Red Cross said that most of the rescued are shocked and confused.

“Most of these people are confused, they’re shocked, they’ve lost loved ones, they’ve spent several days in the water, struggling to travel. As the Red Cross, we didn’t want to overcharge them. What we wanted is to take care of them physically and mentally so that we relieve them as much as possible so that these people can also feel as good as possible in the pain they are living,” he said.

“The ship had enough people, the information has already been given to the Coast Guard and the police, unfortunately there were many people stranded. The information we have is that there were many people inside the boat, mainly women and children”, noted Dimitris, volunteer Samaritan – rescuer of the Hellenic Red Cross.