A council cleaner last week discovered a tiny headless corpse washed up on a beach in Spain.
The tiny baby whose headless and decomposing body was found on a Spanish beach is believed to have died in a migrant boat tragedy which also killed her parents, police believe.
The tiny body was discovered at the beach in the Costa Dorada resort of Roda de Bera on July 11.
Initial estimates put the infant’s age at around two or three before tests confirmed she was much younger when she died.
Spanish police have today confirmed the child had been identified and she was an eight-month-old baby who died on a migrant boat which capsized near to the Balearic Islands on April 6.
Fifteen people died in the tragedy, including her parents.
The Civil Guard said the wooden boat, called a patera in Spanish, had left Cherchel in Algeria on March 21 and had been at sea for 17 days when disaster struck.
Roda de Bera mayor Pere Virgili said after last Tuesday morning’s grim discovery the child could have been on a migrant boat that sank in the Mediterranean.
He said: ‘The hypothesis this baby’s body is another one from the Mare Mortum off our beaches is on the table.’
He said the clothes the baby had on, which included a jacket, didn’t point to her drowning in a typical beach accident.
Forensic experts concluded her body was in the water for between a fortnight and two months.
Her body was said to be missing a number of parts along with her head, and is understood to have been found in an advanced state of decomposition.
DNA tests had showed a match to her mum.
A council cleaner had made the grim find a week ago and alerted his bosses who called the police.
Civil Guard officers cordoned off the area and moved locals and holidaymakers to other areas of the sand before an investigating judge authorised the removal of the body.
It subsequently emerged the decomposed body had washed up on the beach the previous day, but had been ignored by passers-by who mistook it for a doll.
