This picture of a drowned child washed up on a beach in Bordun, Turkey has moved the world into realising the magnitude of the migrant tragedy. This isn’t just Europe’s problem anymore. It is a global humanitarian crisis.
The child in the picture is Aylan Kurdi.
A smuggler vessel carrying Aylan capsized and at least 12 drowned, including five children. Aylan, his brother Galip, who was five, and his mother, Rihan, 35, were all found on the beach in Bodrum.
Aylan’s body was later picked up by a Turkish paramilitary officer.
Media reports say he was from the north Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border, the scene of heavy fighting between Islamic State insurgents and Kurdish regional forces a few months ago.
The hashtag “KiyiyaVuranInsanlik” — “humanity washed ashore” — became the top trending topic on Twitter.
The two boats, carrying 23 people, had set off separately from the Akyarlar area of the Bodrum peninsula, a senior Turkish naval official said.
The army said its search and rescue teams had saved hundreds of migrants in the seas between Turkey and Greek islands over the last few days.
Tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the war in their homeland have descended on Turkey’s Aegean coast this summer to board boats to Greece, their gateway to the European Union.
In a statement late on Wednesday, Turkey’s National Security Council voiced concern over the immigration policies of European countries.
European countries’ worrying approach to the flow of migrants has caused sorrow and it has been evaluated that the issue should be taken up in a basic human rights perspective.
— Turkey’s National Security Council
The official said almost 100 people had been rescued by Turkish vessels overnight as they tried to reach Kos.
Aid agencies estimate over the past month, about 2,000 people a day have been making the short crossing to Greece’s eastern islands on rubber dinghies.
A ship bringing about 1,800 migrants and refugees from one of the islands arrived at the port of Piraeus near Athens on Tuesday night, the Greek coastguard said.
Thousands of people, mainly Africans, have also been trying to reach Europe via boat from Libya to Italy. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said four bodies had been pulled out from the central Mediterranean on Tuesday and 781 migrants rescued, mostly from Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
So far this year more than 2,500 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean, the UNHCR said.
(With Reuters inputs)
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