Border guards

The Romanian Border Police in 2017 participated in 13 joint operations and a pilot project organised under the aegis of the FRONTEX European Border and Coast Guard Agency, having deployed 370 border guards and four sea-going boats, according to the 2017 activity report released by head of the General Border Police Inspectorate (IGPF) Ioan Buda on Thursday.

The situation in Patra, where hundreds of migrants and refugees are awaiting the opportunity to sneak onto a ferry to Italy, is "barely manageable," a coast guard officer in the western port city has told Kathimerini.

The Greek coast guard has released a video showing a boat chase that resulted in the seizure of 1.6 tons of cannabis and the arrest so far of 10 men suspected of being part of a large network smuggling drugs from Albania to Greece and Italy.

The Greek Port Authority and Coastguard will receive 15 million euros from the European Union’s Internal Security Fund to fund operations related to migration flows and the patrolling of the EU’s maritime borders.

At least three people were killed and several are missing when a boat capsized in the early hours of Friday. The vessel was carrying illegal immigrants and refugees to Greece from Turkey.

The Greek coastguard that rushed to the scene discovered the body of one woman but two more bodies were recovered in Turkey’s territorial waters by the Turkish Coastguard a few hours later.

At least three people have died and several people are said to be missing after a wooden boat carrying migrants sank near the Greek islet of Kalolimnos early Friday.

The Greek coast guard said that eight men, four women and one child were rescued. Up to 24 individuals had been traveling on the boat, one of the survivors said.

Coast guard officers on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos have said that a migrant rescue officially reported as having been carried out without incident had actually involved serious tension with Turkish counterparts on Wednesday.

Greece has submitted a request, the second in the last four months, to be exempt from the obligation of enforcing systematic checks on its borders, Kathimerini understands.

A video surfaced two days ago by AegeanHawk, that shows the suspiciously lousy job done by FRONTEX (Netherland Coast Guard), NATO (Albanian CG) and -unsurprisingly- the Turkish CG in intercepting a…low-speed refugee rubber boat in the Aegean Sea, Greece!

Some 970 migrants were rescued off the coast of Libya on March 2, the Italian Coast Guard said, as the numbers attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe continue to rise.

Even before the March 2 arrivals, more than 13,400 people had arrived on Italy's shores so far this year - an increase of 50 to 70 percent compared with 2016 and 2015.