ATHENS: Greece has blamed Turkey for a migrant boat sinking in the Aegean that claimed the lives of four people including two children, noting that Ankara should prevent smugglers from risking peoples’ lives at sea.
“Four bodies were retrieved without carrying personal lifejackets. The victims were aged four, 11, 25 and 28 years old according to the coroner’s report,” Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told a news conference on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Mitarachi tweeted four children died after the accident near the island of Chios in which 22 people were rescued.
On Wednesday, he said one to four people were thought to be missing based on the testimony of survivors. Three people were still in hospital, the minister said, adding that the migrants had come from Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea via Turkey.
“The Turkish authorities must do more to prevent exploitation by criminal gangs at source. These journeys should never be allowed to happen,” Mitarachi tweeted on Tuesday.
In a statement, the coast guard said the boat had set out from Turkey amid strong winds, and that none of the occupants had been given a life vest by the smugglers.
Merchant Marine Minister Yiannis Plakiotakis said the smugglers had shown “criminal disregard for human life.”
The coast guard added that in addition to the adverse weather conditions, the boat was overloaded and as a result, its underside came off.
“All those rescued are in good health and were taken to Chios harbor,” it said.
In a statement earlier, the coast guard had said 27 people were thought to be inside the boat, according to the survivors.
Coast Guard patrol boats, a NATO vessel, nearby ships and fishing boats and two helicopters were participating in the search.
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 2,500 people have crossed the Aegean from neighboring Turkey this year, compared to over 9,700 in 2020.
Over 100 people died or are missing in migrant boat incidents last year, the agency’s data show.
Greece blames Turkey for not taking sufficient action to curb smugglers who send out migrants in unsafe boats and dinghies from its shores.
“This is the reality of the exploitation of migrants by criminal gangs in the Aegean — unscrupulous smugglers putting lives at risk in heavily laden unseaworthy dinghies,” Mitarachi said on Tuesday.
Greece blames Turkey after migrants drown in Aegean
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Greece blames Turkey after migrants drown in Aegean
- Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi: ‘Four bodies were retrieved without carrying personal lifejackets — the victims were aged four, 11, 25 and 28 years old’
- Notis Mitarachi: ‘The Turkish authorities must do more to prevent exploitation by criminal gangs at source — these journeys should never be allowed to happen’
Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan, wife appeal graft convictions: lawyer
- Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month
- A special graft court found the pair guilty of ‘corruption and corrupt practices’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi on Monday appealed their convictions for graft, his lawyer said.
Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.
“We have filed appeals today and in the next few days it will go through clerical processes and then it will be fixed for a hearing,” Khan’s lawyer Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry said.
The papers were filed at the Islamabad High Court.
A special graft court found the pair guilty of “corruption and corrupt practices” over a welfare foundation they established together called the Al-Qadir Trust.
Khan, 72, has been held in custody since August 2023 charged in around 200 cases which he claims are politically motivated.
Kremlin says it has yet to hear from US about a possible Putin-Trump meeting
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday it had yet to receive any signals from the United States about arranging a possible meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, but remained ready to organize such an encounter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it appeared a “certain amount of time” was needed before a meeting between the two leaders could take place. He said Russia understood that Washington was still interested in organizing such a meeting.
Putin said on Friday that he and Trump should meet to talk about the Ukraine war and energy prices, issues that the US president has highlighted in the first days of his new administration.
India minister pledges to evict ‘illegal’ immigrants from capital
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s closest political ally has pledged to rid the capital of “illegal’ immigrants if his party wins looming elections, in a forceful appeal to his party’s Hindu constituency.
Interior minister Amit Shah said every unlawful migrant from neighboring Bangladesh would be expelled from New Delhi “within two years” if his party succeeded in next month’s provincial polls.
“The current state government is giving space to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas,” Shah told an audience of several thousand at Sunday’s rally.
“Change the government and we will rid Delhi of all illegals.”
India shares a porous border stretching thousands of kilometers with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and illegal migration from its eastern neighbor has been a hot-button political issue for decades.
There are no reliable estimates of the number of Bangladeshis living illegally in Delhi, a city to which millions have flocked in search of employment from elsewhere in India over recent decades.
Critics of Modi and Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accuse the party of using the issue as a dog whistle against Muslims to galvanize its Hindu-nationalist support base during elections.
Delhi, a sprawling megacity home to more than 30 million people, has been governed for most of the past decade by charismatic chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal rode to power as an anti-corruption crusader a decade ago and his profile has bestowed upon him the mantle of one of the chief rivals to Modi and Shah’s party.
His popularity has been burnished by extensive water and electricity subsidies for the capital’s millions of poorer residents.
But he spent several months behind bars last year on accusations his party took kickbacks in exchange for liquor licenses, along with several fellow party leaders.
Kejriwal denies wrongdoing and characterised the charges as a political witch-hunt by Modi’s government, and despite resigning as chief minister last year vowed to return to the office if his party won re-election.
The BJP has led a spirited campaign in its efforts to dislodge Kejriwal’s party ahead of the February 5 vote.
Modi is expected to make a pilgrimage to the ongoing Kumbh Mela, the biggest festival on the Hindu calendar, to bathe in the sacred Ganges river on the day of the Delhi assembly vote.
Results of the election will be published on February 8.
Ukraine’s Zelensky urges action against ‘evil’ on Auschwitz anniversary
- The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
- Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker
KYIV : Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday said the world must unite against evil, in comments marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death.
The Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 claiming that the government in Kyiv contained neo-Nazi elements and saying the country must be demilitarized.
Zelensky warned that the memory of the Holocaust is growing weaker and said some countries are still trying to destroy entire nations.
“We must overcome the hatred that gives rise to abuse and murder. We must prevent forgetfulness,” he said, according to a statement from the presidency.
“And it is everyone’s mission to do everything possible to prevent evil from winning,” he added.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that Russia’s invasion “brought back to Ukrainian soil horrors that Europe has not seen since World War II.”
“Jewish communities of Ukraine are also suffering from constant Russian terror, in particular in the cities of Dnipro and Odesa, which have a population of over a million, and other localities,” it added.
The Holocaust decimated the Jewish community in Ukraine, which during World War II was part of the Soviet Union.
It was not the first massacre of Jewish people in Ukraine’s history, which had seen previous anti-Semitic pogroms.
Russia drone barrage sparks fire in western Ukraine
KYIV: A barrage of more than 100 Russian drones sparked a fire at an industrial facility in western Ukraine and damaged residential buildings in other regions, Ukrainian officials said Monday.
The Ukrainian airforce said Moscow had dispatched 104 drones, including attack drones, and that 57 of the unmanned aerial vehicles had been shot down.
Emergency services in the western Ivano-Frankivsk region said the strikes had resulted in two fires at an industrial facility, and that firefighters were working to extinguish one.
They did not specify the type of facility hit but said there were no casualties.
The airforce said there was damage in four Ukrainian regions including Kyiv, where AFP journalists heard drones flying overhead and air defense systems countering the attack.
