Europe
At least 12 Syrians trying to reach Greece have drowned off Turkey after the boats they were travelling in sank.
An image of one of the victims - a young boy lying face down on the beach - has sparked an international outcry over the human cost of the crisis.
The picture, released by a Turkish news agency, is trending worldwide on Twitter under the #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik ("humanity washed ashore") hashtag.
Thousands of migrants have died this year trying to reach Europe by sea.
Warning: This article contains a distressing image
The Turkish coastguard said the migrants had set off from Turkey's Bodrum peninsula for the Greek island of Kos in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but the two boats they were in sank shortly afterwards.
Twelve bodies, including five children, were recovered. Of 23 people on board the two boats, only nine people are thought to have survived - some made it to shore with life jackets.
Hopes are fading for two people people still missing.
The image of the young boy, shown wearing a red T-shirt and lying face-down on the beach near Bodrum, was published shortly after the bodies washed up on shore at about 06:00 local time.
Turkish news agency Dogan said he and the rest of the group were Syrians from the besieged town of Kobane who had fled to Turkey last year to escape advancing militants from the Islamic State (IS) group.
Turkish media describe relatives breaking down as they identified the bodies.
The pictured boy is reported to be three-year-old Aylan, who drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan. Their father, Abdullah Kurdi, survived.
A local fisherman saw the bodies on the shore.
"I came to the sea and I was scared. My heart is broken," he said.
According to the BBC's Fergal Keane, the beach where the bodies were found has become suddenly notorious, but on any day there you will find the debris - deflated dinghy parts, the abandoned belongings of those attempting the crossing - of the desperate.
'Desperate mothers'
The BBC has chosen to publish only one photograph of Aylan, in which he is being carried by a Turkish police officer and is unidentifiable.
However, several news organisations have published more graphic images of the boy.
APUK newspaper The Independent said it had decided to use the images on its website because "among the often glib words about the 'ongoing migrant crisis', it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees".
Despite the reaction to the image online, there has been little reaction from politicians across Europe.
But Yvette Cooper, a leadership candidate for the UK's Labour Party, said the photograph showed "we cannot keep turning our backs" on the issue.
"When mothers are desperately trying to stop their babies from drowning when their boat has capsized [...] Britain needs to act."
Some 350,000 migrants have made the perilous journey to reach Europe's shores since January this year, according to figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Tuesday.
The IOM said more than 2,600 migrants had drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in the same period.
Earlier this week, the Turkish government said its coastguard had rescued over 42,000 migrants in the Aegean Sea in the first five months of 2015 and more than 2,160 in the last week alone.
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