Islamabad: An official told Arab News on Friday that ten Pakistani migrants who died in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece in June had their bodies returned and had been laid to rest, though some families were still waiting for the remains of their loved ones.

On June 14, a trawler transporting migrants from Libya to Italy capsized off the coast of Greece. Out of at least 750 illegal immigrants, 104 managed to survive the overcrowded boat; the majority were from Pakistan, Syria, and Egypt.

About 200 families have provided DNA samples to the Pakistani Embassy in Greece to assist in identifying the bodies of family members being kept at morgues there, and Pakistan has estimated that over 350 of its citizens were aboard the fishing vessel.

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15 of the victims have so far been determined to be Pakistani nationals.

The remains of 10 people were returned on Thursday and interred in their hometowns, according to Asr Ejaz, a spokesperson for the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, which works for the welfare of about 9 million Pakistanis living abroad and their families.

According to Ejaz, two more bodies will be returned on July 25 and three more on July 23. The overseas foundation's welfare division has been investigating the return of the remaining bodies from Greece.

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He claimed that in order to speed up the procedure, his organization was in contact with the Pakistani Embassy in Greece.
To show our sympathy for the bereaved families, we are taking this action.

In recent months, more and more Pakistanis have risky sea voyages to Europe in an effort to flee skyrocketing inflation, unemployment, and other economic hardships. At least 90 people from the Gujrat region alone left their homes on April 15 by flying from the airport in Islamabad to Karachi, then on to Dubai, Egypt, and finally Libya, where they boarded the doomed vessel in June.

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Many of the migrants from Pakistan were also from Azad Kashmir, and they each paid traffickers about $7,000 to embark on the dangerous journey.

Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, promised to take harsh action against the incident's smugglers in the wake of the tragedy. Since then, authorities have stepped up their efforts to combat people smugglers, and in raids mostly in Punjab, they have detained more than a dozen suspects.