Traffickers find new routes between Turkey and Italy
With Greece having tightened measures to stem migrant flows, traffickers are finding new routes to transfer people from the Turkish coast to Italy.
Indicatively, more than 100 ships carrying migrants made the perilous journey this year, while 15 sailboats reached their final destination just between August 28 and 30.
According to data so far, the number of undocumented migrants who managed to sail directly from Turkey to Italy exceeds 7,000 since the start of the year. Traffickers are using old cargo ships capable of transporting hundreds at a time.
One such vessel was the ship with 375 migrants that was intercepted by the Greek navy last Sunday.
The Kos port authority has ascertained that the passengers comprised 192 Pakistanis, 112 Afghans, 56 Bangladeshis, five Egyptians, four Lebanese, four Syrians and two Iranians. There were six traffickers, from Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
