SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A woman from the Kurdistan Region has become the first victim to be named after a dinghy carrying 27 migrants deflated in the Channel between France and Britain last week.
The migrants died when their dinghy deflated as they made a perilous crossing of the English Channel on Wednesday, the worst tragedy on record in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Maryam Nuri Mohammed Amin, 24, made the journey in order to see her fiancé who lives in Britain, her family members and a close friend told BBC.
“When she left Kurdistan she was very happy, she couldn’t believe that she was going to meet [him],” Maryam’s friend Imman Hassan was quoted as saying by BBC.
“She tried to live a better life, she chose the UK, but she died,” Hassan added.
BBC cited her fiancé as saying that Maryam, who had been on the boat with a female relative, was messaging him as the dinghy started deflating.
She tried to reassure him that they would be rescued.
They were messaging each other on Snapchat just before the dinghy began to lose air, he said. Maryam told him that the boat was deflating and that they were trying to get the water out of it.
Reports from Calais say the two survivors, an Iraqi and a Somali, have been discharged from hospital and are due to be questioned about how many people were on the boat.
The tragedy has further strained ties between France and Britain, with French President Emmanuel Macron telling Britain on Friday it needed to “get serious” or remain locked out of discussions over how to curb the flow of migrants across the Channel.
