London: The UK is set to agree deals with several countries in a bid to prevent thousands of illegal migrants reaching Britain, the Sunday Times reported.

The deals will mirror those signed by Italy with other countries, with money exchanged in return for stopping migrants from setting off.

Those in discussions with the UK include Turkiye and Vietnam, as well as the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Deals are expected to be signed by the year’s end.

Italy has managed to reduce the number of people crossing to it by 62 percent after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni struck deals with Tunisia and Libya.

Tunisia received patrol boats and €100 million ($105.4 million) to invest in education, energy and companies employed to halt migration, while Libya’s coast guard will be trained and equipped by Rome. The EU has paid Tunisia an additional €105 million.

However, both agreements have been criticized by human rights organizations over the treatment of migrants in Tunisia and Libya by local authorities.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Meloni in September, during which he praised Italy’s “upstream work” in North Africa.

“I have always made the argument that preventing people leaving their country in the first place is far better than trying to deal with those that have arrived,” he said.

The UK has seen continuous increases in the number of people entering the country illegally, with the Labour government pledging to “smash the gangs” running the trade across the English Channel.

By Nov. 11, the total to have made the crossing for 2024 stood at 32,900 people. In 2023, the total number of crossings was 29,437.

According to UK government statistics, the top five nationalities for small boat crossings for the year up to June were Afghan at 5,730 (18 percent of the total), Iranian at 3,844 (13 percent), Vietnamese at 3,031 (10 percent), Turkish at 2,925 (10 percent) and Syrian at 2,849 (9 percent).

A deal signed by the previous UK government and France gave Paris £500 million ($630.9 million) to stop the crossings. The UK also gives Turkiye significant funds to stop migrants reaching Europe.

Last week, Dutch police arrested a Turkish man suspected of being a “major supplier” of small boat equipment in Amsterdam following a joint operation by the UK’s National Crime Agency.

The UK government is keen to strike a deal with Iraqi Kurdistan, from which a number of trafficking gangs operate.

Earlier this year, high-profile trafficker Barzan Majeed, known as The Scorpion, was arrested in Iraq after being tracked down by the BBC in the city of Sulaymaniyah.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is known to have sent fact-finders to the region to assess the viability of an Italy-style deal.

Any deals are likely to involve funding and training for local security services, as well as potentially including return clauses for migrants who reach the UK.

A source told the Sunday Times: “The assessment made after that trip was that Kurdistani nationals monopolise every part of the journey made by small boat migrants from the procuring of the craft to putting people on the boats on the beaches in France.”

DAR ES SALAAM: Tanzanian rescue workers dug through the ruins of a collapsed building for a second day on Sunday, hoping to pull survivors from beneath the rubble.
The four-story block came down at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) on Saturday in the east African country’s busy Kariakoo market, in the center of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
Five people have been confirmed dead from the disaster, the fire brigade said. At least 70 people had been retrieved alive from the site.
Dar es Salaam regional commissioner Albert Chalamila on Sunday said there were more people still trapped in the basement floor of the shattered building, without specifying how many.
“We are communicating... and already we have supplied them with oxygen and water,” he said.
“They are stable and we believe they will be rescued alive and safe.”
The fire brigade chief John Masunga said the search and rescue had been hampered by the many walls making up the structure of the building.
In the aftermath of the building’s floors rapidly buckling beneath each other until they formed a mountain of debris, hundreds of first responders used sledgehammers and their bare hands to pull away masonry for hours.
Cranes and other heavy lifting equipment were then brought in to help.
It is not clear why the commercial building collapsed but witnesses told local media that construction to expand its underground business space began on Friday.
The incident has renewed criticism over unregulated construction in the Indian Ocean city of more than five million people.
One of the world’s fastest growing cities, Dar es Salaam has been the scene of a frenetic property boom with buildings shooting up at speed, often with scant regard for regulations.
In 2013, a 16-story building collapsed in Dar es Salaam, killing 34 people.