As death toll rises to 81, new accounts clash with official version of migrant disaster off Greece

By DEREK GATOPOULOS
Associated Press

MALAKASA, Greece (AP) — The number of confirmed victims from one of the worst migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean has risen to 81 after three more bodies were found off southern Greece. Also, survivors have claimed that the battered trawler had been under tow by another vessel just before it sank with hundreds of people aboard. The accounts clashed with the Greek coast guard’s insistence that the metal fishing boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy was at no point under tow, and only had a line briefly attached to it hours before it capsized and foundered. Rescuers saved 104 people, and more than 500 are feared drowned. Also Monday, a Greek court postponed for a day a hearing for nine Egyptian alleged crew members of the trawler.