Former Pakistani Woman Hockey Player Dies In Italian Shipwreck

Shahida Raza, a former Pakistani women's hockey player was one of the 67 people who were killed in a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Italy the last weekend as per the officials from her home province.

The ship as per the authorities carried up to 200 migrants when it sank in the rough seas before sunrise near Steccato di Cutro which is a seaside resort on Sunday, Sixteen children are said to be among the people who died. Most of the people on board were from Afghanistan, but the ship also had people from Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, Syria and the Palestinian Territories as per the Italian officials. All of them were trying to illegally cross Europe.

Former Pakistani Woman Hockey Player Dies

Qadir Ali Nayel, a legislator from the Balochistan province has said, “Pakistani authorities have already informed Raza's family members that the Pakistani national level hockey player perished in the boating accident off the coast of Italy,"

Shahida Raza was just 27 years old from the southwestern province, She lived in Balochistan, which is a sparsely populated, impoverished province of Pakistan. She was a part of the Hazara, a minority Shia community from Pakistan. According to what sister Saadia Raza said to BBC, she was trying to reach Italy to get proper medical treatment for her son who is just three-year-old and is suffering from some kind of brain damage.

Shahida was thanking God that she was nearly there when she talked to her sister for the last time before the shipwreck. She also added that she was really scared that something could have happened while she was travelling across the ship and that she couldn't believe it and that she would call her son and bring him for treatment when she arrived at her destination. After that, the call dropped and they failed to reach her again.

As per her sister, before deciding to board the ship Raza took her son to various hospitals in Karachi they couldn't offer him the proper treatment required, but instead suggested Raza take her son abroad in the hope that they might find a way to cure his condition. This made Shahida even more desperate to take this decision.

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