A 2-year-old named Khalid drowned early Saturday in frigid, choppy waters off Greece in the first reported refugee death of the year, officials said.
The toddler was riding with 39 other people aboard a dinghy that crashed into jagged rocks off the Greek isle of Agathonisi in the Aegean Sea, according to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS).
Eleven people were were hurt and 10 of the passengers,
including a 3-month-old baby boy, suffered hypothermia after a 5-hour journey
from Turkey, Agence France-Presse reported. MOAS tweeted a picture of two aid
workers carrying a wooden casket with Khalid's body off the charity’s Responder
rescue ship.
“Nothing can prepare you for the horrific reality of what is
going on,” MOAS founder Christopher Catrambone said in a statement. “Today we
came face to face with one of the youngest victims of this ongoing refugee
crisis. It is a tragic reminder of the thousands of people who have died trying
to reach safety in miserable conditions.
All the other migrants - whose nationalities haven’t been
announced - survived after local fisherman found the crashed boat and alerted
the Hellenic Coast Guard. MOAS and other aid groups rushed to the island’s
waterfront in windy waters a Coast Guard spokeswoman called “very unfavorable.
Emergency crews in Greece have saved at least 217 migrants,
many of them escaping violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, so far in 2016,
according to figures released Sunday by the Guard.
The Aegean Sea lies between Turkey and Greece in the focal
point of a migrant flow that grew over 1 million people in 2015. More than
3,600 people drowned trying to make the trip.
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