Pakistani authorities have arrested 14 individuals in reference to the alleged trafficking of a number of migrants who drowned final week after their overloaded boat capsized within the sea off Greece, police mentioned.
Hundreds of individuals, together with from Pakistan, are thought to have died when the vessel capsized and sank in certainly one of Europe’s deadliest delivery disasters lately.
The Pakistani authorities has ordered a high-level inquiry to research the human trafficking community regarded as concerned, an announcement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s workplace mentioned.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families who lost their loved ones,” Sharif added.
At least 21 of those that died got here from the Kotli district in Pakistan’s a part of the Himalayan Kashmir area, police official Riaz Mughal mentioned. Two of the 12 Pakistanis who survived the sinking additionally got here from the identical city.
“We have already arrested 10 suspects who are part of a human trafficking network that sent these people to Europe,” senior regional police officer Tahir Mahmood Qureshi informed Reuters. “We are hunting for more suspects.”
Some of them had already been traced and the police have been conducting raids to arrest them, whereas others had gone into hiding, he added.
An extra 4 individuals have been arrested within the jap Punjab province, a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) mentioned.
Witness accounts counsel that between 400 and 750 individuals have been packed on to the fishing boat that sank about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern Greek city of Pylos.
Greek authorities have mentioned 104 survivors and 78 our bodies of the useless have been introduced ashore within the quick aftermath. Hopes have been fading of discovering any extra individuals alive.
Most of the individuals on board the capsized boat have been from Egypt, Syria and Pakistan, Greek authorities officers have mentioned.
(Reuters – Writing by Asif Shahzad; extra reporting by Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Emma Rumney and Angus MacSwan)
