At least 79 people drowned on Wednesday when a boat carrying “hundreds” of migrants sank in south-western Greece, the Greek coastguard said on Friday. The search for survivors is continuing, but hopes of finding any survivors are “dwindling”.

At least 125 Syrians were on board a migrant ship that sank off Greece this week, relatives and activists said Friday, as rescuers scoured the waters for hundreds feared missing.

Greek rescuers scoured the Ionian Sea by plane and boat on Friday for survivors of the sinking of a migrant boat, with at least 120 people reported drowned since Wednesday, as hopes of finding others alive dwindled two days after the disaster.

“Hopes of finding survivors are diminishing by the minute after this tragic shipwreck, but the search must continue,” Stella Nanou, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Greece, told AFP.

Seventy-eight bodies were recovered from the sea on Wednesday by the Greek coastguard, a few hours after a dilapidated and overloaded trawler capsized and sank 47 nautical miles (87 km) off Pylos, on the Peloponnese peninsula, according to an official report. One hundred and four people were rescued and transferred to the port of Kalamata, in southern Greece.

The search in the area of the shipwreck continued throughout Thursday night, according to the coastguard.

Police arrested nine Egyptians, aged between 20 and 40, on suspicion of being smugglers, according to a judicial source. The men, arrested among the survivors, were brought before the Kalamata public prosecutor’s office on Friday and are due to appear before an examining magistrate on Monday. They are accused of “human trafficking”, according to this source.

A total of 27 people remained hospitalized on Friday, including one of those arrested, according to the coastguard. Some of the survivors are due to be transferred later today to the Malakasa migrant camp, north-east of Athens, according to public broadcaster Ert.

The fishing boat had left Egypt before taking on migrants in Tobruk, a port city in eastern Libya, and headed for Italy, a port source told AFP.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it feared “hundreds more” had drowned “in one of the most devastating tragedies in the Mediterranean in a decade”.