Families demand group take responsibility for girls’ deaths

MUSLIM families mourning the deaths of two young girls who died in a crash while on a school trip mounted a protest outside Ireland’s largest mosque.

Parents and relatives of Aya Chennita, 12, and Eman Ayadi, 12, crowded outside Clonskeagh mosque and highlighted their safety concerns over children’s trips.

Families also demanded an official apology from the

Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, whose care the two girls were in when they died. Both Aya and Eman died while travelling as part of a 43-strong group of girls from Dublin to an adventure holiday in Connemara, Co Galway.

“In the future, I don’t want children to be killed in the same way as my daughter. There was carelessness on the trip, it was very badly organised,” claimed Aya’s mother, Naima Chennit.

Ms Chennit said she wanted the centre to take full responsibility for the crash.

On the day of the accident on March 26, two buses and a people carrier left Dublin with the children. After a brief stop before the end of the trip, a number of children changed vehicles. The accident happened shortly afterwards outside the village of Kilrickle.

Ms Chennit claimed the driver of the car in which the children died should not have been driving as the person’s official qualification was youth co-ordinator.

“They gave them (the co-ordinator) two jobs, they should have given a job to another person,” she said.

Director of the centre, Dr Nooh Al Kaddo, said the muslim community were negotiating with the families involved in the tragedy.

He confirmed a youth co-ordinator had driven the seven-seater people carrier in which the two girls died, but she had 20 years of driving experience, he added.

The centre had run similar children’s trips for years, with up to eight outings a year, he said.