ATHENS: Dozens of families have offered to adopt a Syrian toddler who survived the “mass murder” of a migrant shipwreck in which 500 people were deliberately drowned earlier this month, Greek authorities said on Tuesday.

The little girl, believed to be 17 to 19 months old, survived three days in the water under the hot Mediterranean sun in the arms of a 19-year-old Syrian woman wearing a life jacket. Her parents perished.

The child’s life is no longer in danger.

Traffickers allegedly drowned the migrants -- who may have included up to 100 other children -- off Malta by ramming their rickety boat when they refused to move to an even smaller vessel on Sept 6.

“Dozens of Greeks call every day to be informed about the state of health of the child and to express their wish to adopt her,” a spokesman for the hospital in Crete, where the child —called Massar —- is being treated, said.

‘Uncle’ flew from Sweden: And a Palestinian man from Syria living in Sweden, who claims to be the girl’s uncle, has travelled all the way to Crete to see the toddler, another hospital source said.

“Thanks to a photo of the little girl posted on Facebook, this man recognised his niece. He has brought family photos and told us that a brother of the child saved from the shipwreck is already staying with him in Sweden, “said Asraf Kabbara, president of the Egyptian Association in Crete.

The child protection service responsible for the girl said it was being cautious about news of a relative.

“We don’t have any contact yet with the man claiming to be the uncle. We’ll have to proceed with many verification methods, a DNA test included,” Dimitris Nikolakakis, director of the service, said.

The UN has called on Egypt to help bring the traffickers to justice for the drowning which it called “mass murder”.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2014