Turks fire on ship with 250 migrants
NICOSIA (AFP) – A man was killed and seven other people wounded yesterday when the Turkish coast guard fired on a ship carrying some 250 illegal immigrants, mostly Turkish, off Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, Turkish-Cypriot police said. The barrage came after the vessel, which was heading from the southern Turkish province of Mersin to Italy, ignored warnings to stop, a spokesman said. The wounded – three women, three men and a child – were airlifted by Turkish-Cypriot search-and-rescue teams to a hospital in occupied Kyrenia. One of the injured, in critical condition, was later taken to a hospital in Nicosia, the spokesman said. The immigrants came from Turkey’s mainly Kurdish-populated southeast, which has served as the theater of a 15-year war between Kurdish rebels and government troops.
