ISTANBUL: Nine Syrian refugees, including seven children, trying to reach Europe drowned on Sunday when their speedboat sank off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, state media reported.
The boat hit trouble off the Demre district of Turkey’s Mediterranean Antalya province, a popular holiday spot, the Anadolu news agency said.
One woman, a man and seven children lost their lives in the sinking which took place in the early hours, it said. The oldest child was 14 and the youngest just three, it added.
Six people — all adults — were rescued.
The Dogan news agency said they were seeking to head illegally to Europe but their planned route was not immediately clear.
The nearest EU territory is the small Greek island of Kastellorizo to the west which lies off the Turkish resort of Kas.
Anadolu said a couple who survived — named as Idris Rashit and Zeynep Osman — lost five of their children in the disaster. State media published images of the pair hunched in grief.
Over a million people, many fleeing the war in Syria, crossed to European Union member Greece from Turkey in 2015 after the onset of the bloc’s worst migration crisis since World War II.
Turkey struck a deal with the EU in 2016 in a effort to stem the flow of migrants, and agreed to take back illegal migrants landing on Greek islands in exchange for incentives including financial aid.
The deal, chastised by rights groups, sharply curbed the number of migrants seeking to cross the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas from Turkey to Greece.
However observers say that the numbers seeking to use this route have been ticking up again in recent months.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 10,948 people crossed to Greece this year up to May 30, sharply more than in the same period in 2017. Thirty-five people lost their lives using this route so far this year, the IOM says.
As well as migrants from countries such as Syria, Eritrea, Iraq and Afghanistan, the route has been used by Turkish citizens fleeing the crackdown that followed the 2016 failed coup.
Seven children among nine Syrians drowned off Turkey: state media
Seven children among nine Syrians drowned off Turkey: state media
Drone strike kills 10, including 7 children, in Sudan’s El-Obeid: medical source
- An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone strike on the Sudanese city of El-Obeid killed 10 people including seven children on Monday, a medical source told AFP.
An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan, which the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to encircle for months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the RSF, with some of the worst violence currently unfolding in Sudan’s strategic southern Kordofan region.
El-Obeid, the region’s main city, lies on a key crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum with the vast western Darfur region — where the army lost its last major position in October.
Following its victory in Darfur, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan, seeking to recapture Sudan’s central corridor and tightening its siege with its local allies around several army-held cities.
Hundreds of thousands face mass starvation across the region.
Last year, the army broke a paramilitary siege on El-Obeid, which the RSF has sought to encircle since.
Drone strikes on Sunday caused a power outage in the city but left no reports of casualties.
Last week, a coalition of armed groups allied with the army said they had retaken several towns south of El-Obeid, which according to a military source could “open up the road between El-Obeid and Dilling” — one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to flee internally and across borders.
It has also created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, and been described as a “war of atrocities” by the United Nations.
