{"id":18510,"date":"2018-10-15T05:23:35","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T05:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18510"},"modified":"2018-10-15T05:23:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T05:23:35","slug":"turkey-izmir-truck-crash-kills-22-migrants-including-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18510","title":{"rendered":"Turkey: Izmir truck crash kills 22 migrants, including children"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"98.6466774716\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">At least 22 people, including children, have been killed when a vehicle carrying <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/subjects\/refugees.html\">refugees and migrants<\/a> plunged off a road into a waterway in western <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/turkey.html\">Turkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The truck was travelling on a highway in the Izmir region close to Izmir airport on Sunday when it flipped and fell into the channel several metres below, Anadolu news agency said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Turkish television showed the wreckage of the vehicle <span>with corpses strewn nearby;\u00a0<\/span>the truck had been reduced to burned-out metal by the impact of the crash.<\/p>\n<p>Thirteen people were injured and taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals, according to local media.<\/p>\n<p>DHA news agency said the driver of the vehicle, a Turkish man aged 35, survived and told police from his hospital bed that he had swerved to avoid a\u00a0<span>white<\/span> oncoming vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>The dead included two babies and two children as well as a pregnant woman, DHA reported.<\/p>\n<p><span>The truck&#8217;s passengers were foreigners who had reached a deal with traffickers to be transported by boat to the Greek island of Samos, south of Izmir. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Turkey became one of the main launch points for more than a million refugees and asylum seekers taking the sea route to EU countries in 2015, many fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The influx of people was drastically curtailed by a 2016 accord between Ankara and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/european-union.html\">European Union<\/a> after hundreds died crossing to Greek islands a few miles off Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>According to UN figures, more than 24,500 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece by sea so far this year, with 118 people losing their lives via this route.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, eight people were found drowned off the Karaburun district, also in Izmir province, after their boat capsized.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-six others are still officially listed as missing after that accident, according to Anadolu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least 22 people, including children, have been killed when a vehicle carrying refugees and migrants plunged off a road into a waterway in western Turkey. The truck was travelling on a highway in the Izmir region close to Izmir airport on Sunday when it flipped and fell into the channel several metres below, Anadolu&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}