Published on 6/28/2026
In a rare challenge that does not care about despair, a father and his son from the city of Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip succeeded in swimming a distance of approximately 8 kilometers before reaching the Greek island of Kos.
According to the testimony of the two men who gave it to the “Aegean Boat Report” organization, which specializes in monitoring migrant boats that risk crossing the Aegean Sea, the father (52 years old) and his son (23 years old) swam from the Akyarlar area near Bodrum in Turkey towards the Greek island of Kos, a distance estimated at about 8 kilometers.
The two men were evacuated from Gaza to Egypt a year ago for treatment at the height of the Israeli bombing of the Strip, and then somehow succeeded in reaching Turkey before deciding to risk their lives on a journey fraught with high risks.
In the details of the trip, the two men only had swimming fins and rubber buoys, and they spent most of the 7-hour trip swimming in the dark before they finally arrived at Paradiso Beach in Kos after sunrise.
The organization stated that it received, at dawn on Friday, a call from the relatives of the two men after they lost contact with them for fear that they had drowned at sea.
At approximately 10 a.m. local time, the two men called the Asian Boat Report organization from the outskirts of Paradiso Beach, and said that they had arrived in Greece, but they were completely exhausted after spending 7 hours in the water, asking for help and medical care.
In following up on the rest of the details, the organization stated in its report, “Like many of those arriving on the Greek islands, they were afraid of the authorities, so they hid near the beach. We were able to convince them to come out of hiding and head on foot to a nearby place, where they could safely wait for help.”
The “Alarm Phone” organization, which specializes in reporting migrants stranded at sea, also called on – through its account on the X platform – the Greek Coast Guard and police to provide care for the two men, who were suffering from severe exhaustion and dehydration.
According to information available to the two organizations, the police later found the two men, but no further information was available about their fate and whether they had been transferred to the hospital or to the closed and controlled center in Makrigianni.
Despite documenting thousands of stories of migrants, the Asian Boat Report considered the story of the two men among the rare cases it monitored of people who tried to reach the Greek islands by swimming despite the extreme danger to their lives.
