No man’s land: three people seeking asylum stuck in Cyprus’s buffer zone

The Cameroonians, who had no idea' they had jumped into the demilitarised area, have been trapped for almost two months

A few months after Grace Ngo flew into Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus from her native Cameroon, she decided to head for the west". Smugglers pointed the student in the direction of the Venetian walls that cut through the heart of Nicosia, Europe's last divided capital.

A little before midnight on 24 May, Ngo leapt from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic into what she hoped would be the war-divided island's internationally recognised Greek south.