KARACHI, 20 November 2003 — The thatched roof of a mud hut collapsed yesterday in eastern Pakistan, killing four people: a woman, her two children and her nephew.
Rafia 32, her two children Allahditta 8, Umme Habiba 4 and her niece Rifaat 11 were killed in the incident.
The victims, who were asleep at the time, were buried under rubble and hit by wooden beams when the roof fell down, said Usman Anwar, the superintendent of police in Lahore, capital of Punjab province.
The cause of the accident in Burki, a village on Lahore’s outskirts, was not known, he said. The woman’s husband, a factory worker, was not home at the time.
Mud houses are common in poor, rural areas in Pakistan, where they are rarely maintained or repaired. Some stand for generations as their wooden beams decay and are eaten by termites.
On Tuesday, five people were killed and 70 injured when the concrete roof of a warehouse collapsed as about 200 women were sitting on it while holding a religious ceremony on a sunny day in their crowded neighborhood, police said. The accident happened in Arifwala, a city 190 km southwest of Lahore.
Meanwhile, local security sources said yesterday Turkish security forces have rounded up 64 Pakistani would-be illegal immigrants, two Greek sailors and two Turks in a human-smuggling operation in the Aegean province of Izmir, .
A naval unit from the local paramilitary police stopped a boat carrying the Pakistanis to a ship waiting off the coast near the resort town of Cesme late on Tuesday, an official said.
The two Greek sailors of the ship, who were apparently planning to take the illegals to Greece, and two Turks who were helping the Pakistanis board the vessel were handed over to judicial authorities on suspicion of human-trafficking, he said.
Turkey is a major route for human smuggling from Asia into Europe, and illegal immigrants are detained on a daily basis.
The immigrants mostly try to cross to Greece by land or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard unseaworthy vessels, at risk to their lives.
