At Least 22 Migrants Killed in Truck Crash in Turkey

A truck carrying migrants crashed in the western province of Izmir in Turkey on Sunday, killing at least 22 people, including children, and injuring at least 13 others, the state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

Video footage showed the mangled wreckage of the open-top truck toppled over in an irrigation canal. Local news reports said the truck, which had been traveling from Aydin to Izmir, veered off the road about 8 a.m. local time in the Gaziemir district, near the airport south of Izmir City. It crashed through a barrier, tipped over and fell about 65 feet from a highway.

The privately run news agency Demiroren said nine of those injured were children. Thirteen injured people were taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals, other reports said.

A state prosecutor has begun an investigation into the crash, and the truck driver could face arrest after hospital treatment, Anadolu said.

Demiroren said the truck’s passengers were foreign migrants who had reached a deal with traffickers to be taken by boat to the Greek island of Samos, south of Izmir. But it was not clear where the migrants were from.

A CNN Turk correspondent at the site of the crash said emergency crews were still trying to retrieve the dead and injured trapped beneath the truck, according to Reuters.

In the past few years, hundreds of thousands of migrants have set out to sea from Turkey’s coasts to try to reach neighboring Greece, which is a major entry point for refugees or economic migrants seeking better lives in Europe. More than 24,000 have arrived so far this year, according to the AP. Most plan to continue on to more prosperous European countries, but are blocked by closed borders in the Balkans.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union in 2016 to send those migrants back to Turkey curbed the number of illegal crossings significantly, the AP said, but many desperate migrants still attempt the journey.

Greek officials said the number arrested at the land border with Turkey so far this year was about double the total for 2017, although the sea route to the eastern islands of the Aegean Sea remains more popular.

The deadly crash in Turkey came a day after a vehicle thought to be part of a smuggling operation collided with a truck early Saturday morning in northern Greece, killing 11 people thought to be migrants.

Both vehicles exploded near the town of Kavala, police said, and emergency workers pulled the charred remains from the wreckage. Only the driver of the truck escaped with minor injuries.

Last Wednesday, two women and a girl who were believed to be migrants were found dead with their throats slashed near Greece’s northeastern border with Turkey, Greek authorities said, according to the AP.

The victims appeared to be of North African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin, but their nationalities and identities were unknown, police said.