Drowned Boy’s Aunt Recalls Last Words

An aunt of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who drowned while his family was trying to reach Europe, says the boy’s last words to his father were “Daddy, please don’t die.” Fatima Kurdi says she spoke to her brother, the boy’s father Abdullah, over the phone (she lives in Canada, which apparently denied asylum to her brother’s family) and he told her of the disastrous boat ride that ended in the deaths of his wife and two sons. “When the boat flipped upside down and the waves kept pushing down, those two boys were in his arms,” she said. “He tried witha ll his power to push them up above the water to breathe and they screamed: ‘Daddy, please don’t die.’”