• Body found in the Adda.

    It could be Hafsa, the fifteen-year-old swallowed by the river

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September 21, 2020 It is from Hafsa, the 15-year-old Moroccan swallowed by the Adda on September 1, the body found yesterday in the river by some fishermen in Berbenno, in the locality of San Pietro.

The parents recognized the body this afternoon in the mortuary of the hospital in Sondrio.

The parents expressed their willingness to celebrate the funeral in their country of origin.

The 15-year-old had been swallowed by the river while taking a bath.



Her father had searched for her for days by diving into the river.

Yesterday, after the report of two fishermen, the Fire Brigade recovered the body in the Adda, in San Pietro a Berbenno.



It is therefore precisely the 15-year-old Hafsa Ben Daoud swallowed by the river last September 1 while with her cousin and other family members she was at the Bartesaghi Park, in Sondrio.

To overcome the heat, she had tried to reach a small beach at the confluence of the watercourse and the Mallero torrent that crosses the capital of Valtellina, but the current had carried her away.



The girl had never been found again, despite days and days of intense searches, the "massive" ones, arranged by the prefect Salvatore Pasquariello, and the "desperate" ones of her father Hamed who was in Morocco at the time of the accident.

The man was not resigned to the thought of never seeing his daughter again and every day he reached the Adda by bicycle and often dived, swimming in the hope of finding her stranded somewhere in the very muddy stream.

"I can't stay still - Hamed had declared - I am busy looking for my daughter. I am able to swim, but I don't risk it. I stay close to the shore. I look into the murky water, where it may have been stranded".

There is a video that takes him back to this heartbreaking gesture that has been around the web. 



The body fished out of the river had characteristics similar to the description of the adolescent, also as regards the height, and there was full compatibility between the places of disappearance and those of the discovery.

There have been no reports of other missing young people in Valtellina.

Today, Hafsa's family members went to the mortuary of the Sondrio hospital for recognition, pending the outcome of the DNA test.

"I wish it were her so I could say goodbye and hug her again," Hamed had said.