Cyprus sees surge in migrants crossing from breakaway north

On the final leg of his journey from Iraq to Europe, Hawye Rasool Saleh paid 400 euros ($457) borrowed from his best friend to a smuggler who would help him across the cease-fire line of ethnically split Cyprus.

The transaction was sealed in anonymity.

"You don't know me, I don't know you," the 32-year-old Saleh said he was told by the trafficker before he climbed into a van on the Turkish Cypriot side.

The crossing was easy, Saleh said. Two soldiers manning a Turkish Cypriot guard post checked the driver's ID, then waved the van through to the buffer zone that divides the northern part of the Mediterranean island from the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, a European Union member.

Saleh, who said he fled religious fundamentalism in Iraq, is one of the thousands of migrants who have slipped into Cyprus this year across its porous 180-kilometer...