Iraqi family buries children who drowned with Aylan

(MENAFN- Arab News) KERBALA: An Iraqi family caught up in the boat accident that claimed the life of Aylan Kurdi buried their two children on Wednesday who drowned along with the Syrian toddler.
The bodies of eight-year-old boy Haidar and 12-year-old girl Zainab who died in the accident off the coast of Turkey arrived at Baghdad airport and were buried in Kerbala.
Their mother Zainab Abbas told journalists near the airport that she her husband and their three children had been on the boat carrying the Kurdi family that capsized last week. Abbas said her family had traveled to Istanbul then made their way to Bodrum on the coast trying for almost two weeks to make the boat trip to Greece.
'Everyone was talking about this route so we decided that we would leave to provide them with a better life' Abbas said. Abbas said that the night they departed smugglers rushed her family onto a boat along with Aylan and his relatives who were fleeing the war in Syria.
But within a few minutes of their departure the boat capsized throwing passengers into the sea and trapping her children underneath it.
Abbas managed to touch her daughter's hand but could not save her. 'I shouted my children's names but they did not respond' she said.
Abbas her husband and third child survived the wreck as did Aylan's father Abdullah who told AFP by telephone that there was an Iraqi family of five on the boat with him and that they lost two children.