79 migrants rescued off Crete, coastguard says

Greek coastguards said they rescued 79 migrants from two boats near Crete on August 25, updating an earlier figure of 85 reported by Greece’s ANA news agency.

A coastguard press officer said an EU drone spotted the two boats near the port of Kali Limenes in southern Crete. The rescued people included at least two women and two minors, and migrants from Bangladesh and Sudan, the officer said.

The operation followed other rescues off Crete in recent days. Crete and the nearby island of Gavdos, about 320 kilometres from the Libyan coast, have become a main point of entry for asylum seekers in Greece.

ANA cited immigration ministry figures saying migrant arrivals in Greece fell from about 61,000 in the year to August 2025 to 42,000 in the following 12 months, a decline of around 31 percent.

European authorities have tightened immigration rules in recent years. Greece’s immigration minister Thanos Plevris has pushed a strict policy on arrivals, and Greece has been in talks with Germany and several other EU countries on setting up “return hubs” outside the European Union for processing migrants’ claims.