Heartbreaking Tribute For Drowned Syrian Boy Appears In Australian Newspaper

“Rest in peace Aylan Kurdi. May God forgive us for failing you.”

Those were the words that concluded a heartbreaking tribute published in an Australian newspaper on Friday, memorializing the 3-year-old Syrian child whose death sent ripples of shock and grief around the world this week.

On Wednesday, photos of Aylan's body, dressed in a red T-shirt and lying limp in the damp sand of a Turkish beach, made the rounds on the Internet, sparking discussions about the enormity -- and the staggering human cost of Europe’s migrant crisis.

Aylan, it later emerged, had been attempting to travel from conflict-torn Syria to Canada with his Kurdish family when their smuggler’s boat capsized. The child, his 5-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rehen, all drowned.

“I don't want anything else from this world,” their father, Abdullah, who tried to save his family, told CNN. “Everything I was dreaming of is gone. "I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die"

In an interview with HuffPost Arabi, Abdullah described the harrowing last moments with his wife and sons.

“I wish I could transfer my breath to them,to breathe life into their bodies again” he said. “We spent a whole hour holding on to the boat. My children were still alive. The first one died because of the raging waves. I had to leave him to save my second son, who also drowned. I turned around to find that their mother had drowned as well.”

Huffington Post