Tragic end: Who are the missing in the Greece migrant shipwreck?

Hameed Iqbal Bhatti had prospered over two decades working in Saudi Arabia, but after returning to Pakistan three years ago, he was getting desperate.

The economy had suffered in the pandemic and his restaurant business closed.

With work avenues drying up and sky-high inflation blowing a hole in his budget, the 47-year-old cobbled together $7,600 for a trafficker to smuggle him into Europe, where he hoped to rebuild the life he once had, his brother Muhammad Sarwar Bhatti, 53, told Reuters.

"He told me that he would start afresh for his children's future and the life he wanted for them," the elder Bhatti said at the family home in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

A boat that left Libya carrying the younger Bhatti and hundreds of others sank off Greece last week, in one of the deadliest migrant disasters of recent years. He is missing and presumed dead, according to his brother, highlighting the perils faced by people who seek to enter Europe illegally.

Also missing is Ali Reza, 28, who had tried to make it to Europe with the help from human smugglers, to find a better job.

“We are waiting for a miracle and miracles do happen," Sawan Raza, brother of the missing, said.

Raja Sakundar, of Bindian village in Kotli, said his four nephews aged 18 to 36 also remain missing.

“We were informed by the media (of the tragedy). When children are not found or die, you can understand what a parent goes through," he said.

Finding the missing and identifying the dead

Following the tragedy, authorities in Pakistan are starting to collect DNA samples from more than 200 families following.

The families had approached authorities, saying they suspect their loved ones were on the boat, according to Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry.

At least 209 Pakistanis were believed to be on board the ill-fated ship, according to data shared with Reuters news agency by Pakistani authorities.

The figure of 209 is based on information provided by families who came forward to say a relative of theirs had boarded the boat heading from Libya towards Greece and were still missing, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said.

A day of mourning was declared in Pakistan in honour of the victims.

Pakistani police, meanwhile, arrested 10 more suspected traffickers, bringing the number of traffickers detained in the nationwide crackdown to 17, she said.

Nearly three dozen other suspects have also been taken into custody in connection with the case.

However, she said the government still cannot verify the number of Pakistanis among the dead or missing from the sinking.

The crackdown followed orders from Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif for security forces to dismantle human smuggling networks in the country.

The overcrowded fishing trawler capsized last Wednesday with as many as 750 people on board. Only 104 people, including Egyptians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Palestinians, have been rescued and 82 bodies were recovered.

An unspecified number of Afghan nationals were also on the boat.

Hefty smugglers fee

According to some accounts from those who survived, even aboard the boat the Pakistani migrants faced discrimination, and many of them were locked below the deck of the boat.

Corroborating the information provided by families, Pakistani officials told AP that those who tried to make the perilous journey to Europe had paid the smugglers between $5,000 and $8,000.

Officials said that some of the detained smugglers allegedly confessed they took money from people who were on the vessel that went down.

According to the Federal Investigation Authority and police, most of the families that provided the DNA samples are from the country's eastern Punjab province and the Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region which is divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety.

In Egypt, Sabah Abd Rabu Hussein is also awaiting to hear news about her son, Yahia Saleh, who was also believed to be on board the same boat.

“I had begged him not to go,” the Egyptian housewife said Sunday, “but he became fed up with our difficult (living) conditions.”

For the past week, Saleh’s family have been desperately hoping for word of their son or the others. They want to know whether he is among the survivors, the dead, or still missing.

“I want my son, I want him alive or dead," his mother said, covering her face with her hands and sobbing.

Saleh's father said that before tragedy, the family were forced to shell out $4,500 to smugglers fearing that they would hurt the young man if they will not pay up.

Perilous journey

Even before last week's sinking off Greece, numerous Pakistanis had perished in the Mediterranean this year.

Muhammad Nadeem, 38, was aboard a boat that sank off Libya in February, killing more than 70.

Nadeem, from the eastern city of Gujrat, had three children and also supported his younger sister and mother. He worked as a salesman at a furniture store, but his wages were modest and rising inflation had made their situation precarious, according to his mother, Kosar Bibi.

"We used to make ends meet, he could feed his family. But it had become impossible", she told Reuters.

Bibi said her son paid someone he knew to arrange the trip to Italy, via Libya.

"He said, 'Mother, our conditions will improve'. He said he would send me to do Hajj, he would get his sister married," Bibi recalled.

Nadeem never made it to Europe.