A migrant holds a crying boy out of a local train coming from Budapest and heading to the Austrian border, that has been stopped in Bicske, west of the Hungarian capital on September 3, 2015. PHOTO: AFP
ANKARA: Turkish authorities have arrested four suspected traffickers over the deaths of 12 Syrian migrants in two boat sinking incidents, including a three-year-old boy whose image became a viral symbol of the tragedy of refugees, a report said Thursday.
The four, all Syrian nationals aged between 30 and 41, are accused of "causing the death of more than one person" and "trafficking migrants", the Dogan news agency reported.
They are to appear in court later Thursday and television pictures showed the men being led away by police as they covered their faces.
Twelve migrants drowned on Wednesday when two boats sank in Turkish waters, in the latest tragedy to hit people seeking to cross the Aegean to Greece.
But attention has focused on three-year-old Aylan, whose tiny body was photographed washed up on a beach in the resort of Bodrum in an image that rapidly went viral on social media.
Read: Migrant child's body on beach shocks Europe
His four-year-old brother, Ghaleb, and their mother, Rihana also drowned when their boat sank.
Reports have said that the family, from the Syrian mainly Kurdish town of Kobane, wanted to eventually reach Canada.
There has over the last weeks been a dramatic spike in the numbers of migrants -- mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Africa -- seeking to leave Turkey by sea for Greece in the hope of finding new lives in the European Union.
Erdogan accuses Europe of being responsible
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday lashed out at EU states for turning the Mediterranean into a "cemetery" for migrants, accusing Europe of being responsible for the death of every single victim.
"European countries, which turned the Mediterranean Sea -- the cradle of ancient civilisations -- into a migrant cemetery are party to the crime that takes place when each refugee loses their life," Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.
Turkey is hosting some 1.8 million refugees from the crisis in Syria and has repeatedly accused Europe of not doing its part to help share the burden.
"European countries which set the criteria for basic human rights and freedoms are now turning their backs to these principles," Erdogan added.
Read: Family of Syrian toddler on Turkish beach tried to reach Canada: report
"We don't think it's fair to burden us with a problem that the whole world faces."
Erdogan's comments came after the image of the corpse of a three-year Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach following a failed attempt to cross the Aegean to Greece caused a wave of horror in Europe.
"The body of a 3-year-old child who died on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea carrying refugees washed up on our shores," said Erdogan.
"Will the whole of humanity not account for (the death of) this 3-year-old-child on our shores?" Erdogan asked.
The Turkish government said this week that the coastguard had rescued over 42,000 migrants in the Aegean Sea in the first five months of 2015 and more than 2,160 in the last week alone.
But Erdogan said "all of humanity" was drowning in the Mediterranean.
"It's the values that made us who we are that are being drowned. Each body washed up on our shores opens big wounds in our hearts," he said.
"But a world system which lost its sense of mercy cannot be a remedy to humanity's plight."
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