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The official death toll from the tragic shipwreck in Pylos reaches 80 as the Coast Guard identified and collected two bodies from the site as search and rescue efforts continue.
According to the first reports, both the dead are being taken to Kalamada in a state of decay and it is not yet clear whether they are male or female.
14 suspects arrested in Pakistan
While legal proceedings are underway in Greece, new information is coming in from Pakistan, where officials say an initial investigation has put as many as 800 people on board the fatal boat.
At the same time, Pakistani police have announced that they have arrested 14 suspects on charges of smuggling illegal immigrants and are looking for other suspects.
It is currently unknown if these arrests are related to the Pylos accident.
The government of Pakistan has ordered a high-level inquiry into the human trafficking gang believed to be involved, according to a statement issued by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office.
Flags were at half-mast on all public buildings in Pakistan today as many of its nationals were among those drowned in the rubble.
A police report said one of those arrested admitted to sending three people on a boat with 300-350 people and extorting up to three million Pakistani rupees ($10,452.96) from each.
Police officer Riyaz Mughal said that preliminary investigations revealed that there were 800 people on board.
“We learned from the two survivors, the arrested suspects and the families of the dead that there were about 750 to 800 people on board,” Mughal told Reuters.
One of the suspects arrested in Pakistan said his son was on the boat and was missing, according to a police report. The report also states that the main suspect behind the smuggling network, which includes Libya, Pakistan and Greece, is based in Libya.
Mughal noted that at least 21 of those who died last week were from the Pakistan-controlled Kotli district of Kashmir’s Himalayan region, from which people have been fleeing to Europe for years.
Tahir Mahmood, a senior regional police officer based in Kashmir’s capital Muzaffarabad, said police were looking for suspects other than those arrested. He did not specify how many.
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