Afghan refugee escapes quake and shipwreck

AN AFGHAN refugee who survived this week’s migrant boat tragedy in Italy had also survived the earthquake in Turkey last month, escaping from a detention centre after it was damaged.

The 29-year-old man, named as Kabiry Rohullah, recounted his story to Italian police who are investigating the capsizing of the migrant boat off the coast of Calabria on Sunday, a disaster that has claimed at least 68 lives, including 15 children. Another 47 people are missing, feared dead, while around 80 people survived. Mr Rohullah first set out from his home in Kabul in December 2021, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

After a year of working in a furniture shop in Tehran, he crossed illegally into Turkey and made his way to the coast, where at the end of December he attempted to arrange a crossing by boat to Italy. He and other refugees were arrested by police, he told Italian investigators, and sent to a detention centre in southern Turkey.

Meanwhile, yesterday the coastguard rescued a fishing boat, packed with more than 200 migrants, which was in distress about 15 miles off the southern island of Lampedusa.