Dramatic helmet camera video has been released showing the rescue of a lone Syrian refugee who had been clinging for several hours to the bow of a sinking boat in the Aegean Sea, in eastern Turkey.
The Turkish Coastguard video shows the rescue of refugee Pelen Hussein, near Edremit, from the perspective of sergeant Tuncay Ceylan.
The video shows Ceylan lowering himself from a helicopter and then swimming to Hussein, who desperately clings onto the bow of a vertically sinking boat that is almost fully submerged.
Pelen Hussein clings to the sunken boat in the Aegean Sea near Edremit, a city in eastern Turkey
Ceylan tells Hussein to "jump into the water", before he attaches a harness to him, which hoists him into the helicopter.
Hussein was then flown back to land and taken to a hospital.
Hussein "was on the verge of hypothermia, and in a state of shock," Ceylan told Turkish media, according to AFP. "I tried to calm him down."
Ceylan added, "When he came to himself a bit he started to cry. Probably his relatives came to his mind as there were a lot of corpses in the water."
Hussein was one of dozens of Syrian refugees who had set off by boat in the hopes of reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, which is near the Turkish eastern coast, AFP reported.
Twenty-seven migrants, 11 of them children, drowned, according to the Turkish Coast Guard.
Over 900,000 migrants and refugees entered Europe last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, many of which risked their lives making he perilous sea crossing in overcrowded boats.
Hussein started to cry after he was rescued; 27 migrants drowned in the incident including 11 children
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