Aylan Kurdi, the boy who was washed ashore dead on a beach in Turkey

A photograph of a toddler's lifeless body washed ashore on a Turkish beach after a migrant boat sank swept across Europe on Wednesday, in a poignant image of the refugee crisis. The images showed the little boy lying face down in the sand near Bodrum, one of Turkey's prime tourist resorts, before he was picked up by a police officer in photographs taken by the Dogan news agency.

Turkish media identified the boy as 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose 5-year-old brother died on the same boat. Media reports said he was from the north Syrian town of Kobani near the Turkish border, scene of heavy fighting between Islamic State insurgents and Kurdish regional forces a few months ago.

1. The boy named Aylan Kurdi was part of group of Syrians who were fleeing on boat.

2. According to Turkey's news service the boy was 3-years old.

3. The boat was carrying a total of 23 people that set off separately from the Akyarlar area of Turkey’s Bodrum peninsula, apparently headed to the Greek island of Kos, where they could have attempted to enter the European Union.

4. Reports suggested that their ultimate destination may have been Canada.

5. The dead included five children among them Aylan’s 5-year-old brother — and one woman. According to the Independent, the woman was the boys’ mother, Rihan, 35.

6. Seven were rescued, and two reached the shore in life jackets. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the boy’s father, Abdullah, survived.

7. Sources say the family may have been trying to reach Canada. In June, the paper said, Aylan’s family “desperately” tried to get permission to emigrate to Canada where Abdullah’s sister, Teema Kurdi, lives in Vancouver — but their refugee application was rejected by Canadian authorities.

8. Abdullah’s sister, Teema Kurdi, “I was trying to sponsor them,” Teema Kurdi told the paper, “and I have my friends and my neighbors who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn’t get them out, and that is why they went in the boat.

9. Aylan’s family was from Kobane, Syria, a city often at the center of clashes between Western forces and the Islamic State.

10. Refugees like Aylan make the 800-mile journey from Kobane through Turkey, trying to get to that nation’s Aegean coast.

11. The hashtag "KiyiyaVuranInsanlik" meaning "humanity washed ashore", became the top trending topic on Twitter

(With inputs from agencies)