Migrations: at least 19 dead in a shipwreck off northern Cyprus

Nicosia – At least 19 people are dead and 30 are missing after the sinking of a boat carrying migrants on Wednesday off the coast of northern Cyprus, local security forces said.
  

More than 100 pbadengers of this boat carrying about 150 were rescued, but between 25 and 30 people are still missing in the late afternoon, said the North Cyprus Security Force (GKK) .

Coast Guard teams dispatched by Northern Cyprus and Turkey are busy finding people missing in the wake of this sinking whose cause is not yet determined, according to the GKK.

According to the Turkish news agency DHA, the boat was carrying Syrians attempting to reach Europe, but this information could not be confirmed from an official source in the immediate future.

The sinking of this boat occurred 16 nautical miles off the town of Gialousa (" Yeni Erenköy " in Turkish), located in the northern part of the island of Cyprus, according to the security forces of North Cyprus.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when the Turkish army invaded the northern third in response to a coup by Greek Cypriots seeking to reunite the island with Greece, which worried the Cypriot-Turkish minority.

Today, the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is only recognized by Ankara, and reunification talks have been in abeyance since the failure in 2017 of negotiations sponsored by the UN.

Several deadly shipwrecks of migrants and refugees attempting to reach Europe have occurred in recent months in the Mediterranean Sea, but such events are still relatively rare near the island of Cyprus.

Cyprus, a member of the European Union and a hundred kilometers from the Syrian coast, has not received a mbadive influx of Syrian refugees such as Turkey or Greece.

Since September 2014, however, more than 1,700 migrants have reached Cypriot shores aboard boats. And the authorities of this country of about one million inhabitants are sounding the alarm against the growing number of asylum applications.

According to UN figures, Cyprus ranks fourth among EU countries in the number of asylum applications per capita.