This heartbreaking photo of a drowned infant being cradled by a German rescuer emerged as a symbol of the migrant waves that most recently claimed hundreds of lives off the coast of Libya this weekend.
The baby, who appears no more than a year old, was pulled from the violent Mediterranean surf after a wooden fishing boat carrying nearly 600 people capsized Friday along with two other vessels.
The rescuer, who only gave his first name, Martin, said the child looked “like a doll, arms outstretched” when he spotted its tiny body amid the waves.
“I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive,” the father of three said. “It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes.”
In the photograph, the baby could be mistaken for a peacefully sleeping child — if not for its tattered, soaked clothing and tiny puckered feet.
“I began to sing to comfort myself and to give some kind of expression to this incomprehensible, heart-rendering moment,” said Martin, a trained music therapist. “Just six hours ago, this child was alive.”
The baby’s body was immediately handed over to the Italian Navy. It was not known if the child’s parents perished in the wreckage as well.
The image is tragically reminiscent of the photo of a 3-year-old Syrian boy found lying lifeless on a Turkish beach last year that came to humanize the crisis plaguing the Mideast, North Africa and southern Europe.
At least 700 hundred migrants are believed to have died at sea this past week alone while attempting to cross from Libya to Italy, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
The German humanitarian organization Sea-Watch recovered 25 bodies from the water, including another child. An Italian Navy ship was able to rescue 135 survivors — but also carried 45 corpses into the southern port of Reggio Calabria with them.
Survivors said the cries of the children they couldn’t save will haunt them forever.
“When the morning came, I saw how the children were crying. And the women,” lamented Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old from the East African nation Eritrea who arrived safely in Sicily after his rickety fishing boat started sinking.
“At this point, I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of the boat.”
At the time, Tekle’s flimsy engine-less craft was being towed by another smuggler’s boat carrying hundreds of others attempting to escape.
Once the main boat also started sinking, its commander coldly ordered the tow line tethering Tekle’s vessel to it be cut, seemingly to try to keep his own boat afloat, according to survivors.
But when the taut line was cut, it snapped back, fatally slashing the neck of a female migrant, cops said.
Filmon Selomon, a 21-year old Eritrean migrant, said that at that point, he knew he could only save himself, so he leaped into the water.
“I started to cry when I saw the situation and when I found the ship without an engine. There were many women and children. Water was coming in from everywhere, top, bottom,” he said.
Tekle described the horror of watching the panicked refugees grabbing on to each other to try stay afloat, only to be dragged under the water together.
“For me, it was very shocking,” he said.
About 300 people were below deck as the boat sank, and they also drowned, authorities said.
Another 200 people tried making a swim for it. Fewer than half survived.
The commandeer of the main boat, a 28-year-old Sudanese man, was arrested and could face charges for the deaths, Italian authorities said. Three other smugglers were also arrested.
Scores of smuggling boats leave Libya each week headed for Italy’s southern islands.
More than 8,000 refugees are believed to have perished in the sea trying to escape their war-ravaged countries since 2014.
With Post Wire Services