One dead, 47 rescued after migrant boat sinks off Greece coast

The boat had hit a rock, the coast guard said, without specifying how many people were on the boat or their nationalities

One man died and 47 people were rescued after a boat carrying migrants sank off southern Greece, the coast guard said Thursday.

A rescue operation was launched early Thursday and the coast guard found "a dead man, aged 45, and 47 surviving migrants" off the Peloponnese peninsula, an official told AFP.

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She said four children and three women were taken to hospital in Sparta, the main city in Laconia.

Thousands of would-be migrants seek to reach the European Union via Greece, making a perilous crossing over the Mediterranean, often in flimsy, overcrowded boats.

The migrants' boat had hit a rock, the coast guard said, without specifying how many people were on the boat or their nationalities.

Coastguards were searching the coast and sea round Laconia on Thursday for other potential survivors.

On Saturday, five migrants and a Greek man were killed in a road accident in northern Greece, near the land border with Turkey. The migrants' nationality was not made public.