5 Bodies Found In Pickup Retrieved From River In Southeast

Five bodies were discovered on Tuesday inside a pickup which had fallen into a river in Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari on Monday.

Abdulkerim Erçak, Hamit Erçak, Mecit Erçak, Ali Dayan and Feyziye Dayan arrived in Hakkari early on Monday morning in the van to their express condolences for a relative of theirs. The person who was driving the pickup is thought to have lost his grip on the steering wheel at a sharp turn, leading the pickup to fall into the river Zap Suyu, also known as the Great Zab, around 15 kilometers from the city of Hakkari.

Search and recue teams have been searching the river to find the van since Monday. Ten people from the Prime Ministry's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD), along with paramedics, municipal workers, gendarmes and divers failed to find the van on Monday, halting the search until Tuesday morning. The van was found with the bodies of five people in it on Tuesday morning when the search and rescue efforts started once again. The van was pulled out of the river by a crane. The people in the van are believed to have drowned. The five bodies were retrieved and taken to the morgue at Hakkari State Hospital.

Hakkari Mayor Dilek Hatipoğlu, Çukurca Mayor Servet Tunç and Hakkari Deputy Mayor Nurullah Çiftçi were at the scene to console those who lost their family members in the accident.

The flow rate of the Zap Suyu had risen due to the latest precipitation, which is believed to be the reason for the tragic result of the accident. However, locals complained to the media about the lack of barriers by the river at that location. Cabbar Yakupoğlu, one of the residents who spoke to the Doğan news agency, said that the Zap Suyu claims lives every spring. Yakupoğlu added that the road is narrow and surrounded by mountains, which leads rocks to roll down towards the road in rainy weather. "There should be barriers here, and we want this issue to be solved as soon as possible," Yakupoğlu said.

SHOTLIST
TURKEY, HAKKARİ, 05 MAY 2015

The van that removed from the water
Crime scene teams work on the vehicle
A corpse that removed from the vehicle
Relatives of dead people in the van
The vehicle on the truck

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