Bride-to-be forced on to boat at gunpoint
RUTHLESS smugglers threatened to shoot migrants – including a bride-to-be – unless they boarded the overcrowded dinghy that went down in the Channel this week, friends said yesterday.
Up to 50 people were supposed to board two boats ahead of the fatal voyage – but one suffered engine trouble, those stuck in camps in France claimed.
Rather than curtail the trip that would have netted them tens of thousands of pounds, the gun-toting gang corralled the migrants into one boat, it was said.
The chilling details emerged as more were named among those feared drowned in Wednesday’s tragedy off the coast of Calais.
The first confirmed dead was 24-yearold student Mariam Nouri Dargalayi, who was recently engaged and trying to reach her fiancé in Britain.
Known to her family as Baran, she
It’s not good,I don’t know if we’re going to make it
travelled from northern Iraq via Germany to the French coast.
Fiancé Karzan Asad, who is said to have British citizenship and is now working as a barber in Bournemouth, said: ‘I am in a very bad state. It is very sad for me, and for everyone.’
Last night a cousin in Iraq, Krmanj Ezzat, said: ‘Her mother and father are totally devastated. The situation is just awful. Baran chose a very difficult way to come to Britain. Karzan was waiting for her in England. She was learning English, she was very smart.’
Mr Ezzat fears four more family members were also on the boat.
Yesterday, the family of Deniz Ahmed Mohammed, a 27-year-old Kurd, said he left them a final voicemail saying: ‘Just pray for us.’ Childhood friends Harem Pirot and Shakar Ali, from the town of Ranya, northern Iraq, were also among the feared victims.
The Mail told yesterday how migrant Mohammed Aziz, 31, made a frantic phone call to his friend Peshraw Aziz and said: ‘It’s not good, the engine isn’t powerful enough – I don’t know if we’re going to make it.’
Multiple sources in the camp have claimed the boat could have had as many as 50 people on board, and the French authorities are braced for the death toll – currently at 27 – to rise.
There are fears for two other Iraqi Kurds – Hassan, in his late twenties, and Twana Muhammad, 18, a student. An Iranian called Sirwan, aged around 25, and a man called Hever, in his 20s and from Ranya, may have died.
The youngest victim is feared to be 12-year-old Riaz Mohammed.