A British tourist has drowned while swimming in the sea during a day trip to a Greek island with his wife, according to local reports.
The 76-year-old man is said to have been visiting Kalymnos, one of Greece’s Dodecanese Islands that sit in the Mediterranean close to the Turkish mainland, when the incident occurred on Tuesday.
According to local news site palmoskalymnou, the man and his wife had travelled by boat from the nearby island Kos, to the south of Kalymnos, and were swimming in the ocean near the island’s Vathi port.
It was not immediately clear what caused the man to drown.
He was pulled from the water and taken by boat to the port of Vathi, but despite Coast Guard workers and other emergency responders rushing to the man’s aid, he was pronounced dead.
A British tourist has drowned while swimming in the sea during a day trip to a Greek island with his wife. Pictured: A view of Kalymnos island (file photo) where the incident took place
The 76-year-old man is reported to have been visiting Kalymnos, one of Greece’s Dodecanese Islands that sit in the Mediterranean close to the Turkish mainland, on Tuesday
The man’s identity has not been released or reported in Greek media.
The Kalymnos port authority has launched an investigation into the incident.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told : ‘We are supporting the family of a British national who died in Greece and are in contact with the local authorities.’
Kalymnos is only around 70 miles from the Turkish Mediterranean resort town of Marmaris where last month a British pensioner also drowned.
The 73-year-old had been on a coastal tour in Mugla Province with friends when he jumped into the Mediterranean as temperatures reached 25 degrees.
But when he struggled to get back into the boat his friends called emergency services, local media reported on April 16.
A team of coastguards, police and divers in two boats pulled him from the water and rushed him to paramedics waiting on the beach.
However, they were unable to save him and he was declared dead at the scene.