An Iraqi woman who drowned with more than two dozen other migrants this week as they tried to illegally cross the English Channel has been identified.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, 24, a Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, had begun texting her fiancé as the group’s dinghy began to deflate, the BBC reported.
In her last message, Amin tried to reassure her fiancé, who lives in the UK, that authorities would rescue the migrant boat in time, he said.
A joint French-British search found 31 bodies and two survivors in the Wednesday incident. Four human traffickers were later arrested on suspicion of their involvement in the ill-fated voyage, France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said at a news conference in Calais.
Amin’s father said her family in Iraq was awaiting the return of her body, according to the BBC.
Amin had “a very big heart, said her friend, Imann Hassan.
“When she left Kurdistan she was very happy, she couldn’t believe that she was going to meet her husband,” Hassan said, according to the BBC. “At her engagement party she was telling me, ‘I will buy a house and live nearby you.'”
