At least twenty-seven people perished in the drama of November 24, the most murderer in the sea furrowed daily by migrants who attempt to join the United Kingdom.
Le Monde with AFP
The corps of sixteen dead victims on November 24th during a shipwreck in the Channel were repatriated Sunday, December 26 before the dawn in Iraq Kurdistan. Families were waiting for them to organize funerals. The aircraft arrived around 2 hours local time at Erbil Airport, the capital of the autonomous region. The victims were transferred to ambulances who left the airport to transport them to their cities of origin in Kurdistan.
In a terminal, families waited in the emotion the arrival of the remains. Dozens of people, men, women and children, were present, some tightening in his arms. Women, all black dressed, lamented on the disappearance of a loved one, another exhibited the photos of a young man.
Initially scheduled on Friday, repatriation was postponed twice. Saturday before dawn, dozens of relatives have already waited long hours, finally getting to tell themselves at the last minute that the plane would not come.
Thirty-three people on board
On the twenty-seven corps found, twenty-six were identified in France: seventeen men and seven women aged 19 to 46, a 16-year-old teenager and a 7 year old child. In addition to the sixteen Kurdish Iraq, also appear a Kurdish of Iran, three Ethiopians, a Somali, four Afghans and an Egyptian. Two only men could have been rescued, an Iraqi Kurdish and a Sudanese, according to the French Ministry of the Interior.
According to the testimony of one, thirty-three people were on board when passers counted them. Questions arise on the calls that migrants would have passed to the French and English authorities, when their fortune craft began to flow, according to the testimony of a survivor.
The Channel Maritime Prefecture had excluded that the call of migrants in difficulty was not treated. Several testimonials of relatives of the victims and the statements of telephone calls corroborate on the contrary the fact that they had joined the relief. The Utopia 56 association seized the parquet of Paris on December 20 for facts of unintentional homicide and omission to help. Procedures have also been launched by families of victims in England.