Syrian child Aylan Kurdi lies dead on the beach (AFP)
There were 15 children on board, including five unaccompanied minors
Al Arabiya.net – Agencies
Published on: January 25, 2024: 9.37pm GST Last updated: January 25, 2024: 10.07pm GST
A three-year-old Syrian girl died in Cyprus on Thursday after being rescued with 59 other migrants who were on a boat off the Mediterranean island, Cypriot authorities said.
The little girl is one of three girls, aged between three and five, who were airlifted to a hospital in Nicosia after being found unconscious during a rescue operation on Wednesday.
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Government health services spokesman Charalambos Charilao told state television that the girl died of a heart attack in a hospital in Nicosia.
He pointed out that there were 15 children on board the boat, including five unaccompanied minors.
For his part, Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letimpiotis expressed his shock at this death, underlining that “the incident highlights in a most tragic way the dangerous problem of migration which requires a coherent European approach and policy”.
According to the Joint Relief Coordination Center (JRCC), the 60 Syrian migrants were “in distress and suffering from dehydration” aboard a wooden boat for several days after leaving Lebanon on January 18. They were spotted 30 nautical miles off the south-eastern coast of the island, where they were rescued.
Police said a Syrian man was detained pending investigation for eight days on Thursday, suspected of being the captain of the boat. The 47-year-old man is under investigation on charges of manslaughter, human trafficking and operating a dangerous and overloaded vessel.
Interestingly, this painful incident recalled the story of the child Ilan, who was part of a group of Syrian immigrants who drowned in 2015 when a boat carrying them from Bodrum to the Greek island of Kos capsized. Among the dead were his brother, Ghaleb, aged five, and his mother, Rehana, aged 28, while his father survived.
As for the image of his body lying after being washed up from a Turkish beach, it sparked a wave of sympathy and anger at what was seen as the failure of developed countries to help thousands of refugees who are making dangerous sea travel on rickety boats to reach Europe.
Aylan comes from the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey, and his family left there to seek refuge in Turkey to escape the violence before deciding to emigrate to Europe.
Interestingly, in 2017, Finland printed on its national currency the image of the Syrian child Aylan, who shocked the world on the beach, in a humanitarian gesture and on the occasion of the centenary of its independence.
In February 2019, a German rescue ship operating in the Mediterranean was also renamed Ilan, becoming a tragic symbol of the migration crisis affecting Europe.
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