The war in Syria has created one of the largest refugee crises since World War II, with more than 10 million people displaced by the mid-2010s and refugee flows to Europe peaking in 2015.
By the time the Assad regime was overthrown in December 2024—more than thirteen years after the start of the civil war— approximately 6.5 million Syrians had fled their country as refugees, while a total of over 13 million were displaced within or outside Syria.
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While Assad’s ouster may have ended the civil war, it did not put an end to armed conflicts. Syria, still struggling to rise from the ashes, has not yet fully shaken off inter-religious violence and political instability.
People within the country continue to seek a way out by any means they can, even risking their lives on illegal sea crossings in a desperate attempt to reach Europe. Cyprus has always been one of the most important stopovers for migration flows, due to its proximity.
Although these flows were more limited at the start of the war, they peaked in the two-year period from 2022 to 2023. It is telling that in 2023 alone, 10,920 arrivals were recorded in the Republic of Cyprus, of which 6,385 were by sea and 4,535 crossed the Green Line.
The story of 21-year-old Raad Khaled Al-Mustafa is one of thousands of stories of Syrians who attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Cyprus, paying hefty sums to human trafficking rings.
In the early hours of March 14, 2025, Raad, along with 20 others, boarded a fiberglass boat bound for Cape Greco. That journey was never to be completed, as halfway through the voyage, a sudden change in the weather and the waves that swelled up sank the boat, killing all but two of the passengers. One of them was Raad, who spent 64 hours in the sea before being spotted by a Coast Guard vessel and rescued about 40 km off the Cypriot coast.
The young man from Syros spoke exclusively to AlphaNews.live and described the reasons that led him to undertake this deadly journey, as well as the nightmare he endured while spending nearly three days in the water, without food or water, clinging to a black waist-high life jacket.
Watch his harrowing interview here:
READ ALSO: They survived the shipwreck, but were drowned by the system: New details emerge about the migrant tragedy at Cabo Greco
