PALMA, Spain: A German migrant rescue ship which operates in the Mediterranean was renamed Sunday after Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach at the height of the migrant crisis, sparking global outrage
Alan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, and aunt, Tima Kurdi, attended the renaming ceremony held in Palma on Spain's Balearic Island of Mallorca. The event was organised by German charity Sea-Eye which operates the boat formerly known as the Professor Albrecht Penck. "We are happy that a German rescue ship will carry the name of our boy. My boy on the beach must never be forgotten. Our grief for the loss of my wife and sons is shared by many, by thousands of families who have so tragically lost sons and daughters this way," Abdullah Kurdi said.
Kurdi paid smugglers to take him and his family from Turkey to Greece after the Turkish government would not grant them the exit visas they needed to enter Canada.