One-way trip to death
Dad grieves for family
ANKARA: European Union foreign ministers were to meet overnight to discuss the escalating immigrant crisis, after the father of a Syrian toddler found dead on a Turkish beach said his children “slipped through my hands” as their boat sank.
Aylan Kurdi, 3, was found on a beach in sneakers, blue shorts and a red shirt after the small rubber boat he and his family were in capsized during a desperate voyage from Turkey to Greece.
Aylan died along with his brother, Galip, 5, and his mother, Rehan. Their father, Abdullah, survived. He said he wanted only one thing: to sit by their graves.
“My kids were the most beautiful children in the world – wonderful,” he said.
“They wake me up every morning to play with them. They are all gone now.”
Mr Kurdi said the overloaded boat flipped moments after the captain, reportedly a Turk, panicked and abandoned the vessel.
Mr Kurdi said he was left as de facto captain of a small boat overmatched by high seas. “I took over and started steering,” he said.
“The waves were so high and the boat flipped.
“I was holding my wife’s hand. But my children slipped through my hands.
“We tried to cling to the small boat, but it was deflating. It was dark, and everyone was screaming.
“I took my wife and my kids in my arms and I realised they were all dead.”
Mr Kurdi’s sister, Tima, initially said the family, flee- ing the conflict in Syria, had been turned down for legal entry to Canada, despite her offer of financial backing and shelter. It later emerged no formal request for refugee status had been made.
Meanwhile in Turkey, a desperate father threw his family on train tracks in Hungary to avoid being taken to a refugee camp.
Hungarian police stopped a train bound for towns near the Austrian border, leaving the refugees on board fearful that they were being forced to go to a camp nearby.
MOSCOW: