Warning: This story contains disturbing images. Although, not graphic. Several people on social media have said that we don’t need to see these pictures in order to be aware of the human cost that the refugee crisis is having. But others have commented that seeing such images can help bring home the horror of a crisis.

Turkish media identified the boy as 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose 5-year-old brother also died on the same boat. The Guardian reported that he was from the north Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border, scene of heavy fighting between ISIS militants and Kurdish regional forces a few months ago.

The images showed little Kurdi lying face down in the sand near Bodrum, one of Turkey’s prime tourist resorts, before he was picked up by a police officer in photographs.

A distressing footage shows rescue workers carrying away the dead body of the boy.

A Syrian woman and her children pause as they walk to the shore in the Turkish coastal town of Behramkale to board a dinghy bound for the Greek island of Lesbos | Source: Reuters

There is outrage — but what next?
It has become a tragically common site to see the corpses of refugees fleeing the proliferating conflicts in the Middle East wash up on Mediterranean shores. So far this year, more than 2,500 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean, the UNHCR said.

Little Aylan had only ever known war. An immensely horrible war characterized only by intense violence, the use of chemical weapons, the Islamic State and al-Nusra, Bashar al-Assad’s thugs, and the various international actors who give these barbarians succor. He was, perhaps for the first time in his short and cruel life, at peace.

Of all the appalling images to emerge from the Syrian conflict, this might have been the most soul crushing. This latest tangible sign was also, perhaps, the most heartbreaking evidence of the harsh reality the migrants go through.

Turkish officials in the coastal town of Bodrum stand near the body of a refugee child | Source: Reuters