Tags: KurdiImage: Reuters
The father of the drowned Syrian boy who was photographed lying hapless and dead on a Turkish beach has stated that he is preparing to take the bodies of his two sons and wife to be buried in his home town of Kobani.
Abdullah Kurdi, a Kurdish Syrian who has been living in Turkey for the past three years and having previously lived in Damascus, said that he no longer had any desire to continue on to Europe.
Speaking outside the mortuary where the bodies of his two sons were being held, Kurdi stated: “I just want to see my children for the last time and stay forever with them.” He described what had happened on board the boat heading for Greece, saying that the captain had ‘panicked’ because of high waves and jumped into the sea, leaving him in control of the small craft. “I took over and started steering. The waves were so high and the boat flipped. I took my wife and my kids in my arms and I realised they were all dead,” he told in his statement to the media.
Three-year-old Aylan, five-year-old Galip and their mother, Rehan, were among at least 12 people who died on the boat headed for Greece. The boat was part of a flotilla of small dinghies boarded by passengers at Akyarlar, the closest point to the Greek Aegean island of Kos.
The Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu stated that the police had detained four suspected people smugglers thought to be linked to the tragedy. Anadolu said the four, including at least one Syrian citizen, were detained on a beach on the Bodrum peninsula and would appear in court later on Thursday suspected of acting as intermediaries for illegal crossings.
Tragic Abdullah Kurdi is in the morgue facing harrowing task of formally identifying his two sons and wife.
The deputy district governor Ekrem Aylanc told the BBC that the Kurdi family had been in Turkey for three years before deciding they should move on to Europe. The process of repatriating the bodies of the three family members is set to begin later on Thursday, authorities told the broadcaster.
