‘They don’t see us as humans’: Family’s anger at people smugglers after daughter dies in boat tragedy
Mohammed looks at me, his eyes wet from tears, and shakes his head gently. Grief is like a weight around him, which he meets with forced smiles and choked-back tears.
“Every day, I think of dying a hundred times,” he says.
Next to him is his wife, Nour, heavily pregnant and sobbing into her hands. She is due to give birth in just a couple of weeks, but now mourns her daughter just as she awaits the arrival of a son.
It is less than a week since Rula drowned in a French canal, and the devastation is still desperately etched on their faces.
Nour unlocks her phone and calls up a photo of Rula. She is smiling out from the screen.
“She was beautiful and I lost her. My little princess. She was seven years old, she had seen nothing in this world. We just wanted to make their lives better,” she says.
Rula died because of the family’s dream of reaching Britain. They had spent years travelling from Iraq, where their lives were threatened, across Europe, to Germany and then on to France.
Nour and her family had spent years travelling from Iraq, where their lives were threatened
A few days ago, the family boarded a boat in France, intent on reaching Britain. They had paid a people smuggler €6,000, and been promised seats aboard the sort of vessel used for tourist trips – safe and reliable.
Instead, they were placed on a death-trap – an overloaded stolen pleasure-boat with no life jackets that capsized on a canal. Rula, who had sought refuge from the noise in a small cabin at the front of the boat, was trapped inside.
“The water came into the cabin and she was stuck,” says Mohammed.
“The smugglers had left us. I had to rescue my wife, my son and another person. But I couldn’t rescue her.”
They are too tired to shout or become furious. But if you ask them about blame, then the answer comes back.
“My daughter died and the reason why is because of the people smugglers who have no morals,” he says.
“They fooled us, took money from us and threw us in the water without any mercy. They do not see humans as humans – they only see materials and money.”
Muhaimen pays his respects at his sister’s funeral
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Rula’s death poses tough question for politicians
Besides them are their three sons – Muhaimen, 14, Hassan, 10, and Moamel, eight. They listen and nod along quietly.
“She was very dear to us, but what do we do?” says Hassan, when I ask him about his sister.
“I want her to come back but she won’t.” His grief is so thick it bewilders him.
The family invited us to talk to them. They wanted the world to know about their daughter, but they also wanted to talk about their exasperation with the life they’ve ended up living – fleeing a home where they cannot stay, but struggling to find a place where they can actually settle.
“I do not know what to do or where to go,” Nour says. “What crime have these children committed? What is their future? I need a country to listen to me, just take their papers.”
Mohammed nods and holds his wife. “When you reach a point when your life is not secure, when your children could get killed, you have no choice but to migrate and go to countries that preach humanity.
Rula’s father Mohammed speaks to Sky News
“But when you talk to them, tell them your story, they threaten you with deportation. Our children are smart but honestly, sometimes we wonder – why did we bring them into this world?”
I ask if they would still like to go to Britain, despite all the trauma they have experienced. The answer is yes. Remarkably, they plan on trying again.
A message comes through. The family has been asked to go to the morgue in Lille.
Mohammed comes in and out, a ball of nervous tension. Hassan and Moamel play with a paper aeroplane on a patch of lawn over the road from the morgue. They find a ladybird and agree that Rula would have loved it.
But then they are called back in, and they see her body, and when we see the boys next they are silent but for their weeping.
A short while later, Rula’s body is released to the family but there is little time to waste. Muslim tradition dictates that the burial must take place before sunrise.
When we get to the graveyard, there are dozens of people waiting – sympathetic strangers who’ve come to offer solace. You can see the family are touched.
At the far end, under the shadow of a tall electricity pylon but shaded from the traffic noise, Rula’s coffin is lowered into a grave.
Rula was buried during a small ceremony
There is a prayer, a moment of reflection, and then the grave is filled in. Her father and brothers all rub their hands in the soil. A bag is filled with the dirt and given to Nour. Flowers are placed over the grave, as well as photos of Rula. A marker is put in place, remembering her name. Hassan kisses it.
We say goodbye to the family, and one thing strikes me. If Mohammed, Nour and their children do eventually get to the UK, they will not be allowed to travel abroad again for a long time.
Reaching Britain will mean being cut off from their daughter’s final resting place, unable to lay flowers on Rula’s grave. Like so much in the story of migration, it is also a tale of making terrible choices.
The Syrian presidency has announced it’s assembling a special taskforce to try to stop nearly a week of sectarian clashes in the southern Druze city of Sweida.
The presidency called for restraint on all sides and said it is making strenuous efforts to “stop the fighting and curb the violations that threaten the security of the citizens and the safety of society”.
By early Saturday morning, a ceasefire had been confirmed by the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, who posted on X that Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to a ceasefire supported by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
The post went on to state that this agreement had the support of “Turkey, Jordan and its neighbours” and called upon the Druze, Bedouins, and Sunni factions to put down their arms.
Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford reports from the road leading to Sweida, the city that has become the epicentre of Syria’s sectarian violence.
For the past 24 hours, we’ve watched as Syria‘s multiple Arab tribes began mobilising in the Sweida province to help defend their Bedouin brethren.
Thousands travelled from multiple different Syrian areas and had reached the edge of Sweida city by Friday nightfall after a day of almost non-stop violent clashes and killings.
“We have come to protect the [Arab] Bedouin women and children who are being terrorised by the Druze,” they told us.
Arab fighters said they had come to protect the Bedouin women and children
Fighters at a petrol station
Every shop and every home in the streets leading up to Sweida city has been burned or ransacked, the contents destroyed or looted.
We saw tribal fighters loading the back of pickup trucks and driving away from the city with vehicles packed with looted goods from Druze homes.
Shops and homes leading up to Sweida city have been burned or ransacked
Several videos posted online showed violence against the Druze, including one where tribal fighters force three men to throw themselves off a high-rise balcony and are seen being shot as they do so.
Doctors at the nearby community hospital in Buser al Harir said there had been a constant stream of casualties being brought in. As we watched, another dead fighter was carried out of an ambulance.
The medics estimated there had been more than 600 dead in their area alone. “The youngest child who was killed was a one-and-a-half-year-old baby,” one doctor told us.
Doctors said there had been a constant stream of casualties due to violence
The violence is the most dangerous outbreak of sectarian clashes since the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime last December – and the most serious challenge for the new leader to navigate.
The newly brokered deal is aimed at ending the sectarian killings and restoring some sort of stability in a country which is emerging from more than a decade of civil war.
Israel and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire, the US ambassador to Turkey has said.
Several hundred people have reportedly been killed this week in the south of Syria in violence involving local fighters, government authorities and Bedouin tribes.
As the violence escalated in the southern province of Sweida, Israel launched airstrikes, including attacks on Wednesday on the defence ministry in Damascus and a target near the presidential palace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said it aimed to protect Syrian Druze – part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.
In a post on X, the US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, said Israel and Syria had agreed to a ceasefire supported by Turkey, Jordan and others.
“We call upon Druze, Bedouins, and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity,” Mr Barrack said in a post on X.
The Israeli embassy in Washington and Syrian Consulate in Canada did not immediately comment or respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
The ceasefire announcement came after the US worked to put an end to the conflict, with secretary of state Marco Rubio saying on Wednesday that steps had been agreed to end a “troubling and horrifying situation”.
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Why is Israel bombing Syria?
After Israel warned it would destroy forces attacking Syrian Druze, Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa told the minority group in a televised statement on Thursday that “we reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party”.
He then claimed Israel has “consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime”.
It comes after the United Nations’ migration agency said earlier on Friday that nearly 80,000 people had been displaced in the region since violence broke out on Sunday.
It also said that essential services, including water and electricity, had collapsed in Sweida, telecommunications systems were widely disrupted, and health facilities in Sweida and Daraa were under severe strain.
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At least three people have been killed after a “horrific incident” at a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department training facility, officials have said.
A spokesperson for the department said there was an explosion at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training in east LA.
The incident was reported at around 7.30am local time (3.30pm UK time).
Aerial footage from local channel KABC-TV suggests the blast happened in a parking lot filled with sheriff patrol cars and box trucks.
The training centre in east LA. Pic: NBC Los Angeles
Attorney general Pam Bondi wrote on X: “I just spoke to @USAttyEssayli about what appears to be a horrific incident that killed at least three at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles.
“Our federal agents are at the scene and we are working to learn more.”
California congressman Jimmy Sanchez said the explosion had “claimed the lives of at least three deputies”.
“My condolences to the families and everyone impacted by this loss,” he said.
Media and law enforcement officials near the explosion site. Pic: AP
The attorney general said in a follow-up post that agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are “on the ground to support”.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the LAPD bomb squad has also responded to the scene.
“The thoughts of all Angelenos are with all of those impacted by this blast,” she said.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed on the incident, his press office said in a post on X.
“The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is in contact with the Sheriff’s Department and closely monitoring the situation, and has offered full state assistance,” it added.
The cause of the explosion is being investigated.
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