At least 60 migrants killed in boat disaster
ISTANBUL: Turkish rescue teams have retrieved the bodies of 60 migrants after their boat sank in a lake in the east of the country, Turkish media reported on Monday, in one of the worst disasters involving migrants in Turkey in recent years.
The boat capsized late at night on June 27 with as many as 80 people on board, and the confirmed death toll has climbed steadily since then. At least two children were reported to be among the dead.
The accident occurred on Lake Van, a large inland lake in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran. The migrants were crossing the lake on a fishing boat in an apparent attempt to avoid police checkpoints on the highways, on their journey toward western Turkey.
Early reports indicated some of the dead may have been Afghans and Pakistanis. Families from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran have started reaching out for information, said Mahmut Kacan, a lawyer who heads the migrant committee at the Van Bar Association.
For more than a year, migration officials have been reporting unusually large numbers of people crossing illegally into Turkey and trying to reach Europe, warning that the figures are creeping back toward the levels seen at the height of the migration crisis in 2015.
Turkey apprehended 60,000 migrants last year, double the number in 2018. The numbers kept climbing early this year, then fell in April and May, when the country was largely under lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, and only authorised motorists were allowed on the roads.
But as the lockdown was lifted in June, the numbers began to rise again.
Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said more than 4,500 migrants had been apprehended already this year in the eastern Van region, and thousands more had been stopped at the border with Iran. Most came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and African countries, he said earlier this month.
“People are still trying, and they always will whether there is a pandemic or not,” said Lanna Walsh, spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration in Turkey.
There were 70 to 80 people aboard the ill-fated boat on Lake Van, according to a statement given to military police by one of the men accused of trying to ferry them across the water. The statement, attributed to Medeni Akbas and seen in written form by The New York Times, said the group included one or two children and five or six women.
Thirteen bodies were found in the lake soon after the accident, before the wreckage was located. Since then, Turkish officials have been using a submersible device to retrieve bodies from the wreck, the Demiroren news agency reported.
Twenty-five of the dead are Afghan, according to an Afghan Embassy official, the BBC reported.
Van province has long been known as a crossing point for refugees from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Known for its harsh winter season, it sometimes features in the news when bodies of migrants emerge on the mountains as the snows melt in the spring.