His father,
Abdullah, wept with relatives as the three-year-old's body was lowered into the ground.
Along
with his five-year-old brother, Galip, and mother, Rihan, he was buried
in the dusty Martyrs Cemetery as dozens of mourners gathered to pay
their respects.
Aylan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, with a relative at the funeral
Kobani has been ravaged by the Syrian civil war, being besieged
by Isis for several months last year, sparking bombing campaigns and
street fighting that destroyed much of the city.
The violence sent
most of its residents fleeing over the nearby border to Turkey,
including Aylan and his family, but his father told his loved ones he
never wants to leave home again.
“He
only wanted to go to Europe for the sake of his children,” said
Suleiman Kurdi, an uncle of the grieving father. “Now that they're dead,
he wants to stay here in Kobani next to them.”
Speaking to
reporters as he travelled with his children’s bodies from Turkey to
Syria earlier on Friday, Mr Kurdi said governments in the Middle East,
not just Europe, need to help the refugee crisis.
Dozens of mourners gathered for the funeral
“I want Arab governments - not European countries - to see (what
happened to) my children, and because of them to help people,” he added.
Mr Kurdi had previously described his sons as "the most beautiful children in the world".
They were among 12 people who drowned after two boats capsized while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos from Turkey.
Mr
Kurdi described how the overloaded boat flipped over moments after the
captain panicked and abandoned the vessel in rough waves, leaving him to
watch as his loved ones were swept away.
“I
was holding my wife’s hand. My children slipped away from my hands,” he
said. “We tried to hold on to the boat. Everyone was screaming in pitch
darkness.”
Turkish police have arrested four suspected traffickers over the deaths, all believed to be Syrian men.
Images
of Aylan’s body, washed up face-down on a Turkish beach – reignited
anger over the deaths of thousands of desperate refugees trying to reach
Europe and dissatisfaction with the EU’s response.
David Cameron has announced that Britain will take in “thousands more” Syrian refugees in response to a tide of public support.
A petition started by this newspaper for the UK to welcome its
fair share has been signed by more than 250,000 people, while prominent
politicians are among thousands more sharing pictures of themselves
with the message “refugees welcome”.
The United Nations refugee
agency estimates more than 300,000 people have used dangerous sea-routes
so far this year to reach Europe, with around 2,500 losing their lives.
Many
of those refugees have fled Syria's four-year civil war, in which more
than 250,000 people have been killed and some 11 million — half of the
country's population — driven from their homes.
This newspaper has
started a campaign for the UK to welcome a fair share of refugees.
Additional reporting by agencies
copy http://www.independent.co.uk/
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