ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Twenty-five migrants from Sulaimani province who were rescued in Libya are expected to return to the Kurdistan Region on Wednesday morning, officials told Rudaw.
“It is decided that at 4 am on Wednesday morning, September 10, those 25 youth will arrive at Erbil International Airport and their plane tickets have been provided by the Kurdistan Regional Government,” Abdulkhaliq Mohammed, communications director at the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) foreign relations office, said on Tuesday.
A group of 25 migrants from the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province, who were rescued in August in Libya, were expected to return home on Tuesday, Muthanna Amin, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s foreign relations committee, told Rudaw last week.
Ahmad al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Embassy's chargé d'affaires in Libya, said the group’s flight will depart Tripoli at 8:30 pm Baghdad time, with a stop in Istanbul before arriving in Erbil. He added that the return process took more than six weeks to complete, and during that time, the youths were monitored and provided with food, medicine, and other assistance.
The migrants are all from the Kurdistan Region’s Raparin administration.
Sahaf also confirmed the case of another Kurdish migrant, Hazhar Qadir, from Raparin, who remains in Libya but is expected to be repatriated later.
“I have been here for around 50 days. I want to return to Iraq. I want to return to my family. I have been here for a long time… I am really tired,” Qadir told Rudaw on Tuesday. He said Iraqi officials are in contact with him and have provided assistance.
In early July, Rudaw reported on a rising number of young people from Raparin attempting to reach Europe through Libya. The sea crossing to Italy has become more popular as border restrictions tightened along the traditional Turkey-Greece route.
“Most migrants are going through Libya,” Europe-based migrant rights activist Ranj Pishdari told Rudaw at the time. “From there, they head across the Mediterranean to Italy. It’s become the preferred route despite the risks.”
The Libya-Italy journey takes around eight hours, compared to up to 72 hours on the Greece route, and can cost as much as $17,000 per person, much of it paid to militias that control the Libyan coast, according to Bakr Ali, head of the Association of Returned Refugees (ARR).
In August, six other Kurdish migrants were also repatriated from Libya, as the Kurdistan Region continues to experience repeated waves of youth migration driven by economic hardship and the search for better opportunities abroad.
Shahyan Tahseen contributed to this report.
