Dead child found on southern Catalonia beach identified as 8-month-old Algerian migrant

The body of a young child that washed up on a Roda de Berà beach in southern Catalonia last week has been identified as belonging to an 8-month-old Algerian girl.

The child had been traveling with her parents and 12 other migrants, all of whom drowned after their boat sunk off the coast of the Balearic Islands on April 6, over two weeks after departing from the northern African coast.  

Police were able to identify the girl by comparing her DNA to that of her mother, whose body was recovered on the day of the shipwreck. 

The infant's body, the eighth to be recovered from this shipwreck, was initially thought to belong to a 2- to 4-year-old child. 

It was discovered on the morning of July 11 by a municipal cleaner who alerted the local authorities and the police.

Roda de Berà mayor Pere Virgili told the press on the day of the discovery that one of the main hypotheses investigators were working with was that it belonged to a migrant child. 

"It could be the body of a child from one of the migrant shipwrecks that are turning the Mediterranean Sea into the Death Sea," he said.