One of three men injured after falling from the FILANTA apartment complex in Larnaca during a Civil Registry and Migration Department raid on Wednesday is in a critical condition.
The first man fell from the fourth floor into an open courtyard and sustained a serious head injury. An ambulance took him to Larnaca General Hospital. Two more men were subsequently found injured in a separate courtyard at the rear of the building and were removed using a specialist fire service platform before being taken to hospital. The circumstances of all three falls are under investigation.
Larnaca police cordoned off all five blocks of the complex and launched an inquiry. It is not known as of the early afternoon on Wednesday whether any arrests had been made during the operation, which covered areas across the whole of Larnaca targeting people residing in the Republic without the necessary permits.
A foreign national who rents an apartment in one of the FILANTA blocks told Phileleftheros that at least one building in the complex had unoccupied apartments that had been squatted — the same building from which the three men fell.
A Palestinian resident living at the complex said police patrol cars began arriving at around 9:30am and started searching apartments. “Then some people fell — we don’t know how — and they were taken to hospital,” he said.
The FILANTA complex, a five-building block, has previously come to the attention of the Larnaca DLGO over the condition of the buildings. Safety and hygiene concerns have been raised for years, and apartment owners have been warned repeatedly to take action.
The incident follows a similar case in Limassol in April 2024, when two men jumped from a fifth-floor window during a migration raid. One of them, 19-year-old Bangladeshi national Anisur Rahman, died from the fall.
An investigation by the Independent Authority for the Investigation of Allegations and Complaints against the Police found no wrongdoing by officers, though the police account of the raid was disputed by an eyewitness living in the apartment.
