The father of a seven-year-old girl who was crushed aboard an overcrowded migrant boat as they tried to cross the Channel has told the horror moment he realized he could not save his daughter.
Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, was trapped in an overloaded rubber boat, fighting for air, screaming and begging people to move aside when the vessel capsized near Calais on Tuesday morning.
He told the BBC how today he fought to hold his daughter Sara’s hand amid the growing panic, but lost her in the stampede and could not prevent her from being trampled.
‘That time was like death itself. We saw people dying. I saw how those men behaved. They didn’t care who they stepped on: a child, or someone’s head, young or old,” Ahmed said through tears.
‘I couldn’t protect her. I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only choice I had.’
Ahmed, an Iraqi who spent 14 years in Europe after fleeing his home country, later revealed that he had sought asylum in the EU for years but was rejected time and time again.
He and his family were in danger of being deported back to Iraq, leaving them with only one option: to make a breakthrough across the Channel to the British coast.
‘If people were in my place, what would they do? Those who (criticize me) have not suffered what I have suffered. This was my last option,” he stated.
Sara (pictured) died last week while trying to cross the Channel to Britain
Sara (right) in the photo with her father Ahmed
Five people, including a child, died trying to cross the English Channel from France to Britain aboard the terribly overcrowded dinghy
Five people, including young Sara, were trampled or suffocated to death under the heaving mass of bodies of the dinghy, which capsized just off the coast of Wimereux, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, just south of Calais.
The ship was terribly overcrowded, with 112 people crammed onto the boat by ruthless traffickers suspected of charging the helpless migrants up to £1,000 per head to board the inflatable dinghy.
French police had tried to intervene but were pushed back by migrants and smugglers waving sticks and throwing flares at them.
As the crowd of migrants pressed tightly together, Ahmed tried desperately to hold on to Sara, who had fallen under the feet of other passengers and was trampled as the dinghy began to capsize.
But her hand slipped as the enormous weight of her fellow passengers ripped her arm from Ahmed’s grasp.
‘I’m a construction worker. I am strong. But I couldn’t pull my leg out. No wonder my little girl couldn’t do that either. She was under our feet,” Ahmed said.
By the time the boat was pulled ashore, Sara was dead; the air was squeezed from her tiny body by the crushing weight of humanity rushing to save itself.
She is survived by the rest of her family: her father Ahmed, his wife Nour Al Saeed and their two other children, 13-year-old Rahaf and eight-year-old Hussam.
Sara (right) with her brother Hussam (left) and sister Rahaf (center)
A family drawing with father Ahmed and mother Nour Al Saeed, Sara and her brother and sister Hussam and Rahaf
The massively overcrowded small boat with 112 people on board briefly ran aground off the northern French coast at Wimereux, near Boulogne-sur-Mer. Migrants are seen boarding the boat for the second time, en route to a successful crossing, after the tragedy occurred earlier in the day
Migrants were seen fighting back French police using only wooden sticks and fireworks
The dinghy got into trouble off the coast of Wimereux, between Calais and Boulogne
While Ahmed is Iraqi, Sara was born in Belgium and had spent most of her life in Sweden.
It is understood that Belgium reportedly denied Ahmed asylum because his hometown of Basra, Iraq, was considered safe.
He told the BBC that he had spent 14 years in the EU and that his children had spent the past seven years with relatives in Sweden.
But they were recently told they would be deported, despite all three children attending school and both parents working.
This news prompted Ahmed to resort to the dangerous crossing of the Channel, arguing that he had no choice but to be deported.
“I spent fourteen years in Europe and was rejected,” he said bluntly, adding that if there was “a 1% chance that I could keep the children in Belgium, France or Sweden, I would keep them there.”
The family of five had tried to cross the Channel three times but were stopped twice after police caught them on the beach.
Eva Jonsson, Sara’s primary school teacher in Udevalla, Sweden, described the seven-year-old as “kind and gentle” in a video message to the BBC.
She went on to describe the tragedy as “very unfortunate”, adding that she had been teaching another of Ahmed’s children and was “really shocked” by the news that they would be deported.
Once the migrants were in the boat, the officers said there was nothing more they could do
Emergency vehicles were seen yesterday morning next to an ice cream parlor on Wimereux beach in France
An emergency medical services helicopter takes off from Wimereux on April 23
Ahmed and his family returned to the French coastline, where French authorities have given them shelter while they wait to bury Sara’s body.
Many of the other migrants have since recovered the vessel and later attempted the crossing again, reaching British waters several hours later where three suspected human traffickers were arrested.
A criminal investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the boat was unseaworthy, not properly inflated and dangerously overcrowded.
Craig Turner, deputy director of investigations at the National Crime Agency, said: ‘This tragic incident once again demonstrates the threat to life posed by these border crossings and highlights why it is so important to tackle the criminal gangs involved are involved in its organization.
“We will do everything we can with partners in Britain and France to secure evidence, identify those responsible for this event and bring them to justice.”
According to claims, ‘a group of young men stormed the boat as it was leaving’.
Guirec Le Bras, the prosecutor in Boulogne, has also opened an investigation into ‘manslaughter, criminal association and assistance to foreigners in an irregular situation’.
Once the migrants boarded the boat, French police stopped trying to prevent them from leaving, the BBC reported.
