Syrian refugee who searched for niece after boat disaster now believes she's dead
Noor Al Jawabreh says girl in photo who looked like her niece Mira is not her
The aunt of a missing refugee girl now accepts Mira Al Jawabreh likely died in a migrant boat disaster in 2014 off the coast of Libya.
For the past 18 months, Noor Al Jawabreh of Kitchener, Ont., has held out hope that her niece was still alive.
The family believed a photograph taken by Italian police at Augusta, Sicily, showed Mira among the survivors.
The picture shows a little girl holding up an ID card with the number 268.
Syrian television and online news reports at the time identified the girl in the photograph as Mira Al Jawabreh.
She would have been the only member of her immediate family to survive the boat sinking.
Now Noor Al Jawabreh accepts the photo is not Mira, but rather a Palestinian girl, Marya Mokdad, who was on the same boat when it capsized.
'All in the hands of God'
"Our responsibility as a family is to search, to make sure of this matter," she told CBC News in Arabic.
"If she was alive, we would return her home. If not, it was all in the hands of God. Not more than this," she said.
CBC News located Marya Mokdad and her family in Denmark after police in Syracuse, Italy, said a Palestinian couple had claimed the little girl shown in the photograph.
The girl's father, Alaa Mokdad, said he understands the Al Jawabreh family's desperate hope to find Mira alive.
"Their circumstances are very difficult. They are looking, they are searching for any evidence," he said in an Arabic interview Friday.
"I am there for them and ready for anything, any help I can give them. If they want to visit us, they are welcome," he said.
Mokdad said he boarded the migrant boat from Libya with his wife Ghalia and his daughters Marya and Malak.
With him were his brother, sister-in-law, and their two children.
Mokdad said the Italian coast guard only managed to save one boatload of women and children before the ship capsized.
All four children and his wife escaped.
'It is all destiny'
Mokdad said there's no chance there was any mix-up about the identity of the children.
"Impossible, impossible, how can I take not my own daughter?" he said. "I have two girls. How could I take someone else?"
Mokdad provided CBC News with photographs of Marya around the time of the boat sinking.
They show a little girl who looks similar both to Mira and to the picture that gave false hope to the Al Jawabreh family.
Noor Al Jawabreh said that after speaking to Alaa Mokdad, she can accept that the photograph she saw is not Mira.
"Yes, the picture of the girl number 268 looks like Mira. But after talking with Alaa ... it is all destiny. What can we do more than this?"
With files from Olesya Shyvikova