World

Pakistanis among 150 migrants detained by Turkey for trying to sail to Greece

Authorities stopped 101 immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria as they were about to set off from Ayvacik

Afp July 13, 2015

Syrian migrants who arrived in Greece by its sea borders, sit on Omonia Square in Athens on April 25, 2015. PHOTO: AFP

ISTANBUL: Turkey's coastguard on Monday detained around 150 migrants, including some Pakistanis, as they attempted to sail from the country's western coast to the Greek island of Lesbos, state media reported.

Acting on a tip-off, the authorities stopped 101 immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria as they were about to set off from the Turkish town of Ayvacik in the western Canakkale province.

They were taken into custody pending deportation, the official Anatolia news agency reported.

Read: Mexico arrests man trying to smuggle Pakistanis among 13 migrants into the US

Later on Monday the Turkish coastguard detained 48 more migrants off the town of Ayvalik in Balikesir province as they tried to head to Lesbos.

Those migrants, including women and children, were from Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Eritrea, Anatolia said.

Turkey, which is already sheltering 1.8 million refugees from the Syrian civil war, has always been a key transit point for people seeking a better life in Europe.

Read: 700 migrants feared dead in Mediterranean shipwreck

Many pay people smugglers thousands of dollars to travel towards EU states in small boats, but the journey is fraught with danger.

In the first half of 2015, more than 68,000 migrants, more than half of them from Syria, have risked the short trip from Turkey to the Greek islands, according to UN figures.

COMMENTS (7)

goggi (Lahore) | 8 years ago | Reply Pakistan is a corrupt State with zero moral and human values. This State has created abysmal poverty, misery, hopelessness, destroyed whole family structures, resulting in mass beggary, unemployment, criminality, forced prostitution, drug abuse, suicides and an unstoppable process of desperate exodus....anywhere but not here! A few weeks ago thousands died in the heat wave and one minister from Sindh said, "they were beggars and drug addicts!!!" In the German language there is a word call "Futterneid!" This word is a combination of two words i.e. Futter which means the food of animals, and Neid which means jealousy. So the term means jealousy of food. This term is derived from the behaviour of meat eating animals when they fight and snatch food from the mouth of each other. You can throw meat in front of dogs and you shall instantly experience this jealousy. On the top of these carnivorous animals stands the Homo sapiens (lat: the wise man) !!!!! Water, food, right of existence has been snatched from millions of humans from the powerful so-called wise man! In fact our overstuffed refrigerators, the booming expensive restaurants, the sickening gluttony, and on the other side long queues of hungry children, women and men is a bitter reality of this vicious, animalistic and primitive insatiable FUTTERNEID!

Zaida Parvez | 8 years ago | Reply Instead of wasting money on hundreds of atom bombs, Pakistan must provide food, clothing, shelter to its people. Thousands die each year of hunger in Tharparkar. Hiding the truth does not make it go away.