Twenty one people were arrested on Tuesday after a migrant boat arrived near the Karpas peninsula village of Vokolida, Turkish Cypriot police said.
Police confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that “it appears” that all 21 people arrived aboard the same vessel, and were found by the coast by local police officers at around 6.30am.
Earlier, police had said the boat had made landfall “at a location which was not an approved port”.
The police’s investigation into the matter is ongoing.
The arrival of irregular migrants in small boats in Cyprus has become something of a rarity in recent months, with the Cypriot government, the European Union, and other countries in the region all having made steps to stem the flow of irregular migrants to the island.
Firstly, a €1 billion financial support package from the EU to Lebanon signed in May 2024 went some way to increasing Lebanon’s capacity to house refugees and prevent them from travelling across the Levantine Sea to Cyprus.
Meanwhile, for much of last year, one of the Cypriot government’s flagship policies related to the issue was plans to have some regions of Syria declared safe to return migrants.
While that plan was initially scuppered by the European Court of Justice in October 2024, developments in Syria itself have seen the country stabilise, with the Cypriot government now offering a paid repatriation scheme for Syrian nationals who fled to Cyprus during the 13-year-long civil war in the country.
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