From Morgue To Migrant Camp, A Search To Identify 27 Dead Bodies

Exactly who were the 27 people who drowned trying to reach Britain this week in the deadliest migrant accident in the Channel? Activists dedicated to providing a decent burial have launched a painstaking operation in northern France to establish their names and nationalities and help distant families cope

Calais, France, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Nov, 2021 ) :Exactly who were the 27 people who drowned trying to reach Britain this week in the deadliest migrant accident in the Channel? Activists dedicated to providing a decent burial have launched a painstaking operation in northern France to establish their Names and nationalities and help distant families cope.

Jan Kakar, head of a Paris-based Afghan group, enters the morgue in Lille on Friday afternoon, mobile phone in hand.

It's already two days since the tragedy off Calais and the bodies await autopsies in the city.

Kakar runs through numerous photographs and messages received on his smartphone.

Eight Afghan families suggest a son, brother, cousin were on the inflatable boat that went down in circumstances that remain unclear.

Kakar scrutinises a photo of one and is trying to figure out if the beaming young man with raven black hair sporting an orange T-shirt really died aboard the vessel.

Those sending the messages still cling to hopes of a mistake, that it was not their loved one. But if it was, they will have to decide whether to repatriate the body to Afghanistan or bury it in France.

Kakar has few illusions.

"They have brothers or relatives who are in the Calais camps and who have already confirmed they were on it," he tells AFP.

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