Heartbreaking Condition refugees in Turkey: Fishermen collect refugee baby/bodies from Aegean Sea

A new video footage has surfaced online showing Turkish fishermen saving an 18-month-old refugee baby from drowning in the Aegean Sea off the western Turkish town of Kusadasi.

The video, released by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News, showed the baby, Mohammad Hasan, who had reportedly been afloat for hours along with 14 other asylum seekers after their boat overturned on Wednesday. Fifteen other refugees onboard the boat had reportedly drowned before the fishing boat found them.

The fishermen thought at first that the baby was dead before they heard him make a sound. While they were calling for help, the crew did what they could to save him.

“The baby was cold and his hands, feet were all white,” said the Turkish boat’s captain, Recep Evran.

Hasan was then rushed to a hospital in Kusadasi by a towboat that answered to the boat’s call for help.

According to the Hurriyet report, the boy remained hospitalized in Turkey’s western city of Izmir with his mother.

Since January, more than 3,000 people fleeing foreign-backed wars, terrorism, and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa have died or gone missing trying to reach Europe after making dangerous sea journeys from Turkey to Greece and across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, according to the International Organization for Migration.