Canadian relatives of a missing, five−year−old Syrian girl are appealing for help after a mysterious photograph surfaced on the Internet, suggesting she may have been the only member of her family to survive a bid to escape the war−ravaged country.
Mohamed Masalmeh, a cousin of the dark−haired girl, says he’s sure the photo shows Mira Akram Al Jawabrah after she was rescued from a boat that overturned off the coast of Italy in August 2014, when the girl was three years old.
Masalmeh says relatives were initially told Mira, her parents and three younger siblings had drowned as they were making their way from Libya to Italy at that time.
But Masalmeh says relatives later spotted the girl’s picture among a series of photos on a Syrian news website showing survivors from the capsizing.
Masalmeh, a longtime resident of Halifax, says he’s not sure who took the photo, and he says subsequent requests for information from the Red Cross, the Italian government and police have yielded no useful information.
He says the girl has an aunt living in Kitchener, Ont., and a grandmother living in Jordan, but he says the family has had no luck making phone calls and submitting paperwork through official channels.
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