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Surrounded by bodies in the unforgiving waters of the English Channel, Issa Mohamed Omar made the agonising decision to let go of the wreck of the small boat he had been clinging to and make a break for a ship he could see in the distance.
Having shed the heavy coat and boots that were weighing him down, the Somali national, who had fled war in Yemen, bravely loosened his grip. “I remember thinking: ‘I am going to die, I don’t want to die here. At least if I die whilst swimming I won’t feel it’,” he told an inquiry into the tragedy.
He swam for more than six hours, taking breaks by lying on his back, before a French woman on a fishing boat spotted him and plucked him from the water.
He was one of the lucky ones.
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