At least 209 Pakistanis were among those who lost their lives in the boat wreck off Greece last week, An international news agency has claimed quoting Pakistani official. The figure of 209 is based on information provided by families who came forward to say a relative of theirs had boarded the boat heading from Libya towards Greece and were still missing, the agency said. The official death toll from the accident still stands at 82 and the number of survivors at 104, of whom 12 were Pakistanis. Hundreds of people from different countries are believed to have been on board the vessel, in what is seen as the worst sea disaster in years for the region. Pakistan is yet to officially confirm how many of its citizens were on the boat, but kick-started a DNA sampling effort to help Greece identify those who died. Witness accounts suggested that between 400 and 750 people had crammed onto the 20- to 30 metre-long (65- to 100-foot) fishing boat which then capsized and sank early on June 14 about 50 miles (80 km) from the southern coastal town of Pylos. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said 29 suspected human smugglers had been arrested in Pakistan so far over the case. “Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has also spoken to his Greek counterpart to discuss arrangements for the recovery of the missing, identification of the bodies and providing relief to the survivors and our efforts will continue in this regard,” foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch. Separately, in a statement issued today, an FIA spokesperson said that 54 cases had been registered against human smugglers in Lahore, Gujranwala and Gujrat. He said FIA’s Lahore Zone had arrested 17 traffickers so far while seven suspects were captured in Gujrat, two in Lahore and eight in Gujranwala. “The Anti-Human Trafficking Circle in Lahore has registered five cases, 18 cases have been registered in Gujrat and 31 in Gujranwala,” the agency said. It further stated that 167 DNA samples of the kin of those killed in the Greece shipwreck had been collected. The samples, FIA added, would be used in identifying the victims. The spokesperson vowed that those involved in human smuggling would be brought to justice and FIA teams were conducting raids on information received from the families of the victims. “A crackdown on the basis of intelligence is being done to arrest all the suspects in the Greece boat tragedy and a new plan is being drafted to prevent such incidents from taking place in the future,” the FIA added.
At least 209 Pakistanis among victims of Greece boat wreck, data suggests
