"When I saw the three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, I was petrified," recalls the photographer who shot the heart-breaking picture of the Syrian toddler refugee drowned at a Turkish beach.
In a recent interview with Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News, Nilufer Demir, a photo-reporter with Dogan News Agency (DHA), another Turkish news organization, described the moment when she took the sorrowful image, which brought the European refugee crisis to worldwide attention.
"Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi was lying lifeless face down in the surf, in his red t-shirt and dark blue shorts folded to his waist," she said. "The only thing I could do was to make his outcry heard."
Demir added that she also noticed another toddler on the ground, without a life jacket, just like other migrants. That boy turned out to be Aylan Kurdi's brother Galip.
"Galip was lying 100 meters away from his brother. I approached him this time. I noticed they didn't have any life jackets on them, any arm floats, anything to help them to float in the water," she said. "This image shows how dramatic the incident was.
Demir was photographing a group of Pakistani migrants attempting to cross into Greece when she and her colleagues "suddenly noticed the lying, lifeless bodies," according to the interview.
"We recognized the bodies belonged to toddlers. We were shocked; we felt sorrow for them," she said. "The best thing to do was to make this tragedy heard."
Noting that she has photographed and witnessed many migrant incidents since 2003 in this region, which caused much pain and sorrow in her heart, she said the refugee issue has gone beyond the borders of Turkey and become an international problem.
"I hope from today, this will change," she said.
