A 12-year-old girl has died and two more children are missing after an inflatable boat carrying an Iraqi family capsized in the Maritsa river near Edirne, Turkey. The family was trying to cross illegally into Greece.
The search went on through the night without result and resumed in the morning. Early in the day, Zodiac boats from AFAD, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority, combed the river, while gendarmerie officers searched the bank and the surrounding area.
The family of five is from Iraqi Kurdistan. The father is 41 and the mother 37. The missing children are 9 and 5. Germany was their final destination.
On 13 October the family travelled from Sulaymaniyah to Istanbul. On the evening of 14 October, smugglers took them to a marshy spot by the Maritsa, near the village of Bosna Koy, in an area locals call "the NATO Bridge".
The boat capsized during the night, and the incident became known on 15 October. The mother and one child made it to a small island in the river. The current swept the other two children away.
People who saw the incident raised the alarm. Gendarmerie, AFAD, medical teams, UMKE teams and 112 emergency ambulance crews came to the scene. Rescuers brought both parents and the girl to the bank.
Gendarmerie officers pulled the child from the water and gave her first aid on the bank. She was unconscious, and an ambulance took her to the hospital of the Medical Faculty at Trakya University. She died there despite the doctors' efforts. Early reports differed on who the dead child was and how old she was.
The parents are at a police station in Edirne. No charges against them have been confirmed.
The father says the family made two attempts to cross the river. The first time, the boat capsized but everyone survived. He says he and the mother wanted to give up, but the people escorting them pressed them to go on.
On the second attempt, the overloaded boat was carried by the current into a tree and capsized, the father said. The parents say they agreed a fee of $55,000 with a smuggler for the trip to Germany, to be paid on arrival.
The mother said the children drowned before her eyes. Relatives fear the other two children are also dead. She asked the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan to help find the bodies and bring them home, because she wants to bury them in Kurdistan.