(AFP) She was just two years old and she was from Mali. And her death this weekend after days fighting for her life puts a harrowingly human face on the migrant crisis in the Canary Islands.
She was brought to Arguineguin port on Gran Canaria island last Tuesday after Spain’s Salvamento Maritimo coastguard rescued a boat carrying 52 people, among them her mother and older sister, who had spent days at sea surviving on seawater.
All but dead, two Red Cross medics worked furiously to revive the toddler on the harbour floor, their desperate rescue efforts ultimately successful in a series of poignant images that made headlines in Spain and beyond.
