Video: Turkish fishermen rescue a Syrian toddler from the sea

Turkish fishermen hauled an 18-month-old Syrian boy out of the Aegean Sea after the boat he was traveling on sank, possibly claiming around 15 lives.

Video from the Turkish Dogan News Agency (DHA), posted by the Telegraph:

The boy and his mother, who also survived, are Syrian asylum seekers trying to reach Greece by boat like more than 560,000 others who have made the journey this year. On this particular route, 368 people have died so far in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“We found 15 people altogether who were alive and we were able to pull them to our boat,” one of the fishermen, Cenap Gumren, told CNN.

He said the fishermen were at first not sure if the boy, whose name is Mohammed according to the Telegraph, was alive.

“We saw a life vest, which looked like an empty floating life vest, but we decided to still go check it out. I am so glad we decided to go. When we got close, it looked like a toy, like a doll, and we thought he was dead. My first thought was, ‘Okay, we have to pick up this dead baby body from the water.’ But when we got closer to him, we heard his moaning,” he said.

Overall, more than 704,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Europe by sea this year–with 3,257 dead or missing along the way, according to the IOM.