In early September in 2015, a photo of a young boy lying lifeless on a beach in the Mediterranean captured the world’s attention. The picture showed two-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down in the sand.

Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria, but on the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, the family’s father and husband, was the only one to survive.

Tima Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister and Alan’s aunt, spoke about the night the family boarded the boat in Bodrum, Turkey.

Tima said she went to grab her phone and noticed she had dozens of missed calls; she called her sister-in-law who was living in Turkey.

The journey the Kurdi family took was one thousands of Syrians attempted at the height of the civil war.

On this episode of the Global News What Happened to...? journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis and speaks with Tima about the Kurdi family’s devastating journey and finds out how the photo of Alan mobilized Canada to take action and help thousands of Syrians fleeing persecution.

Contact:

Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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