Migrants swim next to their overturned wooden boat during a rescue operation by Spanish NGO Open Arms at south of the Italian Lampedusa island at the Mediterranean sea, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022.
photo: AP/Francisco Seco
The Greek government has suspended the search for missing migrants whose yacht sank in the Aegean Sea last week.
Sheikh Hussein Hama Salih, the representative of the Sulaimani-based Summit Foundation, dedicated to migrant and refugee affairs Agency for Refugee Affairs in Greece, told Kurdsat News that "there is no new information about the fate of the migrants whose yacht sank in the Aegean Sea."
"No one from the Kurdistan region has contacted them to say that they are relatives of the migrants," a Summit Foundation representative in Greece noted.
"He said the search for the migrants has been suspended because the Greek government would usually stop the search after 48 to 72 hours of an incident," Hama Salih explained.
He said, "the exact number of missing migrants is unknown and the search requires special divers because the depth of the water at the scene is unknown."
Asked whether any Kurdish citizens were among the missing, the foundation's representative said that there is no information, but no one from the Kurdistan Region has contacted to say that the relatives of the migrants, but among the 29 migrants rescued, there are no Kurds or Iraqis.
Ari Jalal, director of Summit Foundation, said that "they had contacted relevant embassies and authorities regarding the identity of the missing migrants, and they are positive that there are no Kurd or Iraqi nationals among the missing."
A migrant yacht with over 80 passengers on board capsized near the Aegean Island of Karpathos on November 9. Twenty-nine migrants were rescued from drowning, and over 50 others are still missing.
The Mediterranean has become the main route to Europe, and almost all migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia pass through the Mediterranean to get to Europe. The war in Ukraine has made the other routes from Ukraine and Belarus risky for immigrants.