The father of a seven-year-old girl who was crushed to death aboard a packed migrant boat as they tried to cross the Channel has recounted the horrible moment he realised he could not save his daughter.
Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, found himself trapped on an overloaded dinghy, battling for air, screaming and begging people to move, when the craft capsized near Calais on Tuesday morning.
He told the BBC today how he fought to keep hold of his daughter Sara’s hand amidst the growing panic but lost her to the stampede and could not prevent her from being trampled to death.
”That time was like death itself. We saw people dying. I saw how those men were behaving. They didn’t care whom they were stepping on – a child, or someone’s head, young or old,’ Ahmed said through tears.
‘I could not protect her. I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only choice I had.’
Ahmed, an Iraqi who spent 14 years in Europe after fleeing his homeland, later revealed he had spent years applying for asylum in the EU, only to be rejected time and again.
He and his family were facing deportation back to Iraq, leaving them with only one option – to make a break across the Channel for British shores.
‘If people were in my place, what would they do? Those who (criticise me) haven’t suffered what I’ve suffered. This was my last option,’ he declared.
Sara (pictured) died while trying to cross the Channel to Britain last week
Sara (right) pictured with her father Ahmed
Five people, including young Sara, were trampled to death or suffocated beneath the heaving mass of bodies on the dinghy, which capsized just off the coast of Wimereux, near Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais.
As the crowd of migrants pressed tightly together, Ahmed desperately tried to hold onto Sara, who had fallen beneath the feet of other passengers and was being trampled.
Sara tragically died alongside four other migrants trying to get to Britain last week.
She is survived by the rest of her family, who were also trapped, but still able to breathe.
While Ahmed is Iraqi, his daughter Sara was born in Belgium and had spent most her life in Sweden.
It is understood that Belgium reportedly denied Ahmed asylum because his hometown of Basra, in Iraq, was considered safe.
He told the BBC his children had spent the last seven years in Sweden but was recently informed they would be deported with him to Iraq.
Sara’s teacher, Eva Jonsson in Udevalla, Sweden, described the seven-year-old as ‘kind and nice’ in a video message to the BBC.
The family-of-five had already tried to cross the Channel three times, but had been stopped twice after police had caught them on the beach.
On that fateful day, Ahmed recalled how men were behaving, not caring who they stepped on or whether this was someone’s child.
He screamed for ‘Help!’, which was heard by the BBC who were on the beach when the inflatable boat capsized.
Sara (right) with her brother Hussam, (left) and sister, Rahaf (centre)
A family drawing depicting father Ahmed and mother Nour AlSaeed, Sara and her brother and sister Hussam and Rahaf
The boat carrying 112 migrants, instead of an advised 20, crashed into a sandbank off Wimereux, causing mass panic before it flipped over.
The journey to the UK continued and reached British waters several hours later, where three suspected people traffickers were arrested.
A criminal enquiry is underway, but it is already clear that the boat was unseaworthy, not properly inflated and dangerously overcrowded.
Smugglers are suspected of charging up to £1000-a-head to board the inflatable dinghy, which got into difficulty early on Tuesday morning, flinging around 50 people into the bitterly cold water.
French police were faced with migrants holding sticks and throwing flares and firecrackers.
Once the migrants had got into the boat, the French police stopped trying to prevent them leaving, the BBC reported.