Heartbreaking images that emerged Wednesday of a drowned Syrian toddler's body on a Turkish beach went viral, shared by thousands of social media users around the world.
The 3-year-old boy and his 5-year-old brother were reported by Turkish media to have been among 12 refugees who drowned when their boat apparently capsized while trying to make the short but treacherous journey to the Greek island of Kos.
Photos carried by Turkey's Dogan news agency showed the child face-down in on the beach, wearing a red T-shirt, blue shorts and sneakers with Velcro closings, and subsequently a Turkish police officer cradling the small corpse.
Europe is coping with an enormous human wave of refugees, many of them from Syria, and images of recent days have shown people struggling through gaps in border fences, sleeping in train stations or trudging wearily through fields. And the world was horrified last week by news that the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants had been found in a truck on a roadside in Austria, apparently suffocated.
But even against this backdrop of dramatic suffering, the dead toddler's photo struck a nerve.
About 2,000 people per day are making the short crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands, with thousands more crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa. European Union states report more than 500,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, and 2,600 of them have died trying to make it.
READ MORE
The conflicts and failures behind the European migrant crisis
Germany's embrace of refugees spurs backlash
At a Macedonian way station, Syrian and other migrants focus on the path ahead
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times