At least 19 migrants killed as truck overturns in Turkey’s Izmir
An accident involving a truck carrying a large number of migrants overturned in Turkey, killing or wounding dozens, state-owned media reported on Sunday.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An accident involving a truck carrying a large number of migrants overturned in Turkey, killing or wounding dozens, state-owned media reported on Sunday.
The truck ran off a raised road in the Menderes district, located in the western Anatolian province of Izmir, crashing several meters below. At least 19 migrants, including children, died in the incident and at least 11 more were wounded, according to the Anadolu Agency.
Following the incident, ambulances rushed to the scene to transfer victims to nearby hospitals.
They were en route to Izmir from Aydin Province, said local sources who chose to remain anonymous. The identity and nationality of the migrants have not yet been released.
Turkey has been one of the main routes for illegal migrants to cross into Europe, namely since 2011, after civil war begun in Syria.
On Wednesday, at least 34 people, many of them from the Kurdistan Region, drowned in the Aegean Sea in a failed attempt to cross into Turkey.
Due to the war with the Islamic State (IS) and a years-long financial crisis in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, many Kurds have fled to Turkey to find an immigration corridor into Europe. However, a significant number of them have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece, often in makeshift boats ill-equipped to safely transport them.
In August, four members of the same Kurdish family also lost their lives in the Aegean Sea while attempting to cross over to Greece and seek asylum.
Editing by John J. Catherine
