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An 8-year-old boy travels 3,500 miles from Africa to Italy in search of school after a jihadist group attacks his hometown.
Oumar decided he had to leave his small village near Tambaga in western Mali after his hometown was attacked four months ago.
After walking through the Sahara desert and spending time in prison, he eventually boarded a dinghy and attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea and reach Europe.
After the grueling journey, he was able to call his father, whose phone number he had memorized, to let him know he was safe.
During the attack four months ago, he was fleeing on foot from terrorists and was separated from his family.
Oumaru did not return to his village and continued walking through the Sahara desert.
During his journey, he joined various groups of weary travelers along the way and eventually reached Libya.
However, when he arrived, he was captured by a Libyan gang and forced to work as a welder and painter.
He was eventually freed from captivity and attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
But his dinghy was seized by the Libyan coast guard and thrown into the notoriously brutal sea. Ain Zara prison in Tripoli.
Oumar was then smuggled out of the prison in a trash can by two adults and eventually returned to the beach in Zawiya, outside Tripoli, where he boarded a second dinghy.
There he joined another dinghy with a larger boy (also named Omar) who recognized him from prison and acted like an older brother for the rest of the journey.
They, along with 23 other children and more than 60 adults, embarked on an extremely dangerous voyage to Europe.
After several days adrift in the Mediterranean, the two Oumers thought they would be taken back to Libya when they spotted a coast guard ship.
However, it was the NGO’s lifeboat, Ocean Viking, and the boys and the rest of the boat’s crew were eventually rescued safely.
The ship had just responded to another migrant boat drifting from Libya that killed about 60 to 100 people.
Angela Nocioni, an Italian journalist who was on the lifeboat at the time, told the Telegraph: When he told me his story, I did my best to confirm every detail.
“All the survivors in the dinghy told me, ‘It’s true, he’s all alone.’
Oumar did not want to leave Angela’s side when he was picked up by the lifeboat and was found to be dehydrated, hungry and suffering from hypothermia.
The older Umar admitted that the younger Umar had been lonely ever since Ain Zara prison.
When the Ocean Viking finally docked in the port of Ancona on the northeast Italian coast of the Adriatic Sea, the two Umarites stepped off the ship hand in hand.
Afterwards, the two hugged each other and parted ways. When young Umar arrived at a local leisure center for processing, a matchmaker from Mali was waiting for him.
Alessandro Fuchiri, director of the Ancona migration center, told the newspaper that Umar told him his parents were still in Mali.
Oumaru said he was able to memorize his father’s phone number, and Fusiri gave him his mobile phone to make the call.
When his father answered, Oumaru told him he was in Europe and asked, “Dad, can I go to school?”
Doctors examined Oumar and found that he had scars on his body and a broken bone in his heel that required a cast.
Mr. Fusiri called him a “very intelligent person” and said he was “very brave.”
The center is trying to find him a place in a local school with other immigrant children, he said.
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