Ahmed Alhashimi stood on the beach, howling at the retreating waves, beating and clawing at his own chest, and surrendering to the grief and rage and guilt that would not go away.

“I could not protect her. I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only choice I had,” he sobbed.

A week earlier, before dawn, on the same stretch of French coastline south of Calais, the 41-year-old had found himself wedged tightly inside an inflatable boat, screaming for help, lashing out at the bodies around him, begging people to move, to give him space, to let him reach down and rescue his seven-year-old daughter, Sara, from the suffocating darkness into which she’d been crushed.

“I just wanted him to move so I could pull my baby up,” Ahmed explained, of the young Sudanese man who had been part of a larger group that had crowded on board at the last moment, as the boat had drifted away from the shore. But the man had first ignored him, then threatened him.

“That time was like death itself. We saw people dying. I saw how those men were behaving. They didn’t care whom they were stepping on – a child, or someone’s head, young or old. People started to suffocate,” said Ahmed, bitterly.

Although Ahmed is an Iraqi, his daughter had never even visited the country. She was born in Belgium and had spent most of her short life in Sweden.

In all, five people died in the same incident, victims of what must have felt like an agonising, slow-motion stampede.

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