At least 79 drown, hundreds missing in migrant shipwreck off Greece

At least 79 migrants drowned early Wednesday and hundreds more were missing and feared dead after their overloaded boat capsized and sank in open seas off Greece, in one of Europe's deadliest shipping disasters in recent years.

As a painstaking search for survivors continued, a European rescue-support charity said it believed around 750 people were on board the 20- to 30-metre-long (65- to 100-foot-long) vessel. The UN's migration agency estimated up to 400 while Greece declined to speculate on the passenger count.

By midday, 104 people had been rescued. A media report said the boat left from Libya, and a shipping ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity said most of those on board were from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan.

Search and rescue operations were to continue through the night, with military aircraft deploying flares to light up the Mediterranean waters around the wreck site about 80 km southwest of the southern Greek coastal town of Pylos.

Survivors were taken to the Greek port of Kalamata near Pylos. Covered in blankets, they rested on mattresses at a warehouse shelter, and the migration ministry was expected to move them to a camp outside Athens.

The shipwreck was the deadliest off Greece in several years. In February, 96 people died when their wooden boat smashed into rocks on Italy's Calabrian coast during a storm.

Greece's caretaker administration, in power between an inconclusive election on May 21 and new elections on June 25, declared three days of national mourning.