A mother and her four children who are believed to have died in the Channel boat tragedy told MailOnline just a week earlier of their dream of starting a new life in the UK.
Iraqi Kurdish mother Kazhal Rzgar, 46, and daughters Hadya, 22, and Hasta, seven, and sons Twana, 19, and Mubin, 16, are feared to be among 27 victims of last Wednesday’s disaster.
MailOnline discovered the family on November 17 as they were scavenging blankets, warm clothing and cooking implements from their former camp after it was shut down by hundreds of French police.
Hasta was also pictured by MailOnline the previous day on November 16 as she excitedly tried on a bright orange lifejacket in the hope that she could get a place to a boat.
Hadya Rzgar, 22, Mubin, 16, Hasta 7, with their mother Kazhal Rzgar (right), the Kurdish family, who lived in Grande-Synth camp in Dunkirk, are missing and feared dead are, they are thought to be among at least 27 migrants who died in last week's Channel tragedy
Her family were among hundreds of migrants who turned town the chance of claiming asylum in France because they thought it was worth risking their lives to get to the UK.
Kazhal and her children started their journey five-months-ago when she left her policeman husband Rezgar behind in the Kurdish administered area of Iraq so he could join them later.
They paid people smugglers to take them from their home in Darbandikhan to Turkey, and then on a boat to Italy.
The family were smuggled through France and Italy on lorries before they arrived nearly four-weeks-ago at the squalid migrant camp in Grand-Synthe near Dunkirk.
They survived largely on food hand outs from charities who made daily visits to the camp until it was closed down by French police on November 16.
The following day MailOnline found them rummaging through piles of debris to find anything they could use after they got through holes in fencing at the sealed off entrance to the camp.
They piled up items to take away in an old shopping trolley and were later photographed by MailOnline as they pitched their tent in a grass field next door.
In an exclusive interview, Mubin said: ‘We are staying here because we want to come to England. We think England is so nice. You can get a job, go to school and have good weather.’
Mubin admitted that his family had paid ‘so much money’ to people smugglers to reach Europe, but he refused to say how much.
He added: ‘It is hard living here in the cold and rain with no toilets and no money. But when I get to England, I want to go to school and then get a job as a barber.
‘France is good, but my mum doesn’t like France. The language is so hard. English is easier and we have family in Birmingham as well.’
Hasta Rzgar aged 7 after they had to move from Grande Synthe camp Migrants set up camp in the field next to where the Grande Synthe stood
He said that his family faced borrowing 2,500 euros each to get a place on a boat across the English Channel because they did not have much money left.
Mubin added: ‘It is so dangerous on the boats, but we have to go.’
His sister Hadya, a former art student at a Kurdish university, said in faltering English: ‘In Iraq we have no money and no life. People are not good. Life is good in England. You have a home and everything is good.
‘When I get there, I want to be an artist or an actor in a film’.
Kazhal who speaks no English, said through her son: ‘We just want to come to your country. All we want is a life.’
She and her family used some of their last savings to spend the night in a hotel on November 16 after they were forced to
