At least 44 people drown over Eid holiday

ANTALYA – Anadolu Agency

DHA photo

More than 40 people drowned across Turkey in the week including the four-day Eid al-Fitr holiday, police said July 21.

According to figures compiled from police reports since July 14, at least 44 people drowned throughout the country, while three others remain missing.

Over the weekend at the end of the Ramadan holiday, 24 drowned, including two teenagers who died swimming in rivers in the country’s south, as temperatures rose above 30 degrees Celsius.

Two female cousins drowned in a watering pond in the Central Anatolian province of Konya on July 20, while two young men died due to drowning in a 7-meter-deep pool in the western province of Balıkesir on July 19. 

A soldier, who was to be discharged soon from his troop in the southeastern province of Mardin, drowned in the Tigris River near Batman’s historic Hasankeyf district, where he had gone with a one-day permit on July 18. His body was found 24 hours after he drowned, with the efforts of a rescue team made up of 15 people. 

On July 21, two people drowned and another is still missing after their boat capsized in the Marmara Sea near Istanbul and a Pakistani student died off the coast of Muğla province in Turkey’s southwest.

The figures include the sinking of a boat carrying Syrian migrants from the northwest Aegean coast of Çanakkale that resulted in six deaths. The group, including women and children, were attempting to reach the Greek island of Lesbos when their boat ran into trouble.