Three Bangladeshis fleeing Libya drown in Greek waters

Greek coastguards on Sunday retrieved the bodies of three Bangladeshi nationals who drowned off the coast of Crete when they fled from a ship that was evacuating them from Libya, the Merchant Marine said. "Forty-nine people left the ship. They used a rope to climb down," a Merchant Marine official told AFP.
The Cypriot-flagged ship Ionian King was evacuating 1,280 people from Libya, most of them Bangladeshi nationals. The reason why the 49 passengers disembarked secretly when the ship anchored at Souda Bay was not known, but speculation was rife that they did not carry legal documents and were afraid they would be deported to Bangladesh.
So far, 30 men, many of them suffering from hyperthermia, have been transferred to a hospital at nearby Chania, according to the Merchant Marine official.