Bodies of 13 Frozen Refugees Found at Iran-Turkey Border

13 refugees died from freezing at the Iran-Turkey border. A Turkish human rights group in Van province announced that the refugees were Afghan and Syrian citizens who were caught in a blizzard.

German news agency reported on Sunday, February 9, citing a human rights group in the Turkish city of Van, that 13 refugees died from freezing in Turkey’s Van province, which borders Iran. The human rights group announced in a tweet related to the deaths of these refugees that after crossing the Iran border into Turkey, the refugees were caught in a blizzard in the severe cold of the Chaldoran mountains and lost their lives.

Müftü Amin Bimlez, the governor of Van, told Anadolu Agency that he received information that 13 refugees died from freezing after illegally crossing the border. The local official stated that the emergency management center called “AFAD” has not been able to conduct necessary rescue operations due to stormy weather and severe blizzards.

The nationality of the migrants was initially unclear, but according to Turkish newspaper “Orunsol,” 10 victims of this incident were Afghan citizens and three others from the city of Kobani in Syria.

However, this is not the first time such a deadly incident has occurred at the Iran-Turkey border, particularly for Afghan refugees. Previously, frozen bodies of Afghan refugees have been found multiple times at the Turkey-Iran border.

Dr. Zakera Hakmat, an advocate for Afghan refugees’ rights in Turkey and founding member of the “Afghan Refugees Solidarity and Compassion Association,” told Deutsche Welle Farsi about the bodies discovered in mid-2019: “The discovery of bodies has happened before and we witness this every year. When refugees want to illegally enter Turkey, they are forced to cross through the border areas of Turkey’s mountainous regions. When migrants traverse this route on foot, they face difficulties, and some of them are buried under several meters of snow, freeze to death from the severe cold. Snow covers the bodies, but later when the snow melts, local people discover them by the smell of the bodies and report it to the gendarmerie.”

Hakmat told Deutsche Welle Farsi that families from Afghanistan contact their association and consult about receiving the bodies. Relatives bear the cost of transferring these bodies to their country.

According to Zakera Hakmat, conditions inside Afghanistan have become difficult and people have lost hope for the future, turning to migration.

Zakaria Barkzai from the Afghan Consulate in Istanbul also told Deutsche Welle Dari that insecurity, poverty, and unemployment have caused tens of thousands of Afghans to take the path of migration. They illegally travel to Turkey with the intention of going to European countries.