This had been the family's fourth attempt at a crossing since they'd arrived in the area two months earlier. Twice the police had caught them on the beach as they'd struggled to keep up with the other migrants sprinting towards a smuggler's boat. Ahmed said this time the smugglers - who charged 1,500 euros (£1,280) per adult, and half that for each child - had promised him that only 40 people, mostly Iraqis, would get on their boat, but that they'd been surprised when a separate group of Sudanese migrants had appeared on the beach and insisted on piling aboard.

Sara had been calm at first, holding her father's hand as they'd walked from the train station in Wimereux the evening before. They had then hidden in the dunes north of town overnight. Sometime before 0600, the group had inflated their boat and then the smugglers had ordered them to carry it down on to the beach and run with it towards the sea before the police intercepted them.

Suddenly, Ahmed said, a police tear gas canister had exploded near them, and Sara had begun screaming. Once they'd clambered on to the boat, Ahmed had kept Sara on his shoulders for a minute or so but had then taken her down in order to help his other daughter, Rahaf, to get on board, which is when he lost sight of Sara.

It was only later, when French rescuers reached them out at sea and offloaded some of the more than 100 people crammed on the boat, that Ahmed was finally able to reach his daughter's body.

"I saw her head in the corner of the boat. She was all blue. She was dead when we pulled her out. She wasn't breathing," he explained, between sobs.