ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani charity in the teeming coastal metropolis of Karachi is serving up a rare treat for the city’s Muslims ahead of their fast for the holy month of Ramadan — ostrich meat.
Expensive and seldom eaten in Pakistan, ostrich is deemed exotic in the mainly Muslim nation of 208 million people.
Volunteers stewed the red meat in cauldrons and served it in a chickpea curry to more than 500 residents before dawn broke on Tuesday, when Pakistani Muslims began their month-long Ramadan fast.
“Keeping in view of this deprivation, (wealthy) people supported us and like the previous year, we offered those dishes which even a middle class person cannot afford, let alone the poor,” said Zafar Abbas, the general secretary of the Jafaria Disaster Management Cell Welfare Foundation.
Abbas said the plan is to offer deer and other expensive cuisine in coming days during Ramadan, when practicing Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and smoking during daylight hours.
The move is likely to be welcomed by those who stuffed themselves with ostrich meat.
“It felt very nice. I had never eaten (ostrich),” said van driver Mohammad Hussain. “It was so wholesome that I feel no need to eat for the next two days.”
Pakistani charity dishes out ostrich as Ramadan treat for poor
Pakistani charity dishes out ostrich as Ramadan treat for poor
- Ostrich is deemed exotic in the mainly Muslim nation of 208 million people
- Volunteers served the stewed curry to more than 500 residents before dawn broke on Tuesday
Hundreds of migrants, including Pakistanis, land in Greece after search operation at sea
- Rescued migrants were taken to a temporary facility on Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini
- Greece has made deportations of rejected asylum seekers a priority under its migration policy
ATHENS: Greece’s Coast Guard rescued about 540 migrants from a fishing boat off Europe’s southernmost island of Gavdos on Friday, one of the biggest groups to reach the country in recent months.
The migrants were found during a Greek search operation some 16 nautical miles (29.6 km) off Gavdos, a Coast Guard statement said. They are all well and are being taken to a temporary facility on the nearby island of Crete after reaching the port of Agia Galini, a Coast Guard official said, adding most of the migrants were men from Bangladesh, Egypt and Pakistan.
In a separate incident on Thursday, the EU’s border agency Frontex rescued 65 men and five women from two migrant boats in distress off Gavdos, the Greek Coast Guard said.
Greece was on the front line of a 2015-16 migration crisis when more than a million people from the Middle East and Africa landed on its shores before moving on to other European countries, mainly Germany.
Flows have ebbed since then, but both Crete and Gavdos — the two Mediterranean islands nearest to the African coast — have seen a steep rise in migrant boats, mainly from Libya, reaching their shores over the past year and deadly accidents remain common along that route.
Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy will be eligible for help in dealing with migratory pressures under a new EU mechanism when the bloc’s pact on migration and asylum enters into force in mid-2026.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said deportation of rejected asylum seekers will be a priority.
