In less than a week, the bodies of nine people have been found washed up on beaches in southern Turkey. According to authorities, most of them may be migrants who disappeared at sea in December.
“It was determined that the shoes and clothing found on five of the bodies were made in Syria,” the Antalya provincial governorate reported Sunday evening after the discovery of the first six bodies.
Two more were found on Monday morning in the same province and another 200 km further west in the neighboring province of Mugla, the Turkish press reported.
According to the Antalya governorate, five of the first six bodies that washed ashore could be migrants who had set out at the beginning of December for a crossing between northern Lebanon or southern Syria and the neighboring island of Cyprus, the gateway to the “European Union”.
The Lebanese Embassy in Ankara announced on December 11 that a boat leaving the area with 90 people on board had disappeared from radar screens.
Turkish authorities believe one of the bodies in Antalya may be that of a young Turkish woman who disappeared in that coastal city in early January. According to the Turkish press, DNA analyzes were carried out on Monday.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 3,000 migrants will have disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2023, the highest number since 2017.