6yo Boy Reunites With Mum After Crossing Med Alone

Story ByAna LacasaSub EditorMichael LeidigAgencyNewsflash

Newsflash/Croce Rossa Italiana

This is the emotional moment a six-year-old boy is reunited with his mother and twin sister after spending four months apart on a treacherous trip from Africa to Europe.

Little Junio Diaria was separated from his mother Aisha Binate, 22, and his twin sister Rama when the family decided to flee the Ivory Coast as Aisha did not want her daughter to suffer female genital mutilation in 2018.

The family’s father had been killed in an ambush and they made their way to Libya where mother Aisha decided to take a migrant boat to Italy with her daughter, leaving Junio with a friend so that the family would have a survivor if their boat sank, according to local newspaper Fanpage.

Fortunately, the mother and daughter made it safely to Italy and they were taken to the province of Crotone, in the southern Italian region of Calabria, at the end of February.

Corriere della Sera report Junio then became a stowaway on a boat travelling to Italy with other migrants. He was hidden in the hold of the boat and only went out when rescuers from the Ocean Viking ship run by the charity group SOS Mediterranee went onto the boat.

Newsflash/Croce Rossa Italiana

He then spent 14 days on the Moby Zaza ferry with other migrants who were forced to quarantine on the ferry after being rescued.

He has now been released and in the video, recorded by the Italian Red Cross, he can be seen being reunited with his family.

He can be seen looking through the window for his mum and sister and when he spots them he walks out.

He runs into his sister’s arms as they scream with joy and his mum embraces both of them. The twins fall to the ground with their hug as their emotional mother then picks her son up and holds him tight in tears.

Spokesperson of Italian Red Cross told Newsflash that the family will start the process to ask for asylum and humanitarian protection.