LAST week a 12-year-old schoolgirl tragically died after drowning in a river. Now her devastated family say they no longer feel safe in the community they have come to call home. BRAD MARSHALL reports.

ON the afternoon of June 27, Bury was bathed in sunshine, and for Zamzam Ture it had been a day like any other, until every parent’s worst nightmare became her reality.

Her daughter, 12-year-old Shukri Yahya Abdi, did not come home after school and despite hours of searching her family were unable to find her.

Later that evening Shukri was found drowned in the River Irwell.

The tragedy has devastated the family and community, and left them no longer feeling safe in the town and country which gave them refuge.

“My life is destroyed, as are my kids’ lives. I don’t know how we will come back,” Ms Ture said.

Originally from Somalia, Ms Ture moved to the UK with her children in 2017 from a refugee camp in Kenya, where she had fled to due to violence in her homeland.

The family were immediately relocated to Bury, where they have lived ever since as part of a growing Somali community in the town.

At first the town seemed a safe haven, far from the years of war in Somalia.

“I was happy and my kids were happy to be here,” Ms Ture said.

The eldest of Ms Ture’s five children, Shukri, was a hardworking and conscientious girl who hoped to one day become a doctor.

Despite her age, Shukri was very mature and at home she took care of her siblings and helped her family “24/7”.

Ms Ture said: “Shukri was a quiet girl. She was so happy and so focussed on her future.

“She was hoping to get a better life and had her whole life ahead of her.

“She was very very committed to school and loved to do science and maths.”

On Thursday, June 27, Shukri left school at Broad Oak Sports College with several other children, from where she usually made the brief walk to her home.

Just a short time earlier, her mother had gone to pick up her younger children from primary school, as was their routine, to ensure she reached home for about about 3.30pm ­— where Shukri was usually waiting.

Once back at home, Ms Ture helped her younger children get changed and eat to prepare to go to the mosque.

However, as time went on she became increasingly concerned about Shukri, and decided to go out and look for her.

She said: “Shukri was not here and I thought ‘That’s not right’.

“I went straight to the school and they told me everyone had left.”

Ms Ture added that a member of the school’s staff said she had seen Shukri “around 25 minutes ago”, at the end of the school day, with some other children.

With her panic building, Ms Ture launched a desperate search.

She said: “I realised that she was not at school and not at home so I started to walk around. But I couldn’t find her.”

Ms Ture then returned home and called her close family friend, Abdirahman Muse, who contacted the police.

When officers arrived they took a statement from Ms Ture, who told them Shukri’s disappearance was totally out of character.

She said: “I told them, ‘My daughter never goes out anywhere. She does not have friends to go to. I don’t even send her to the shops.

“This is not normal for her, so something is not right’.”

However, while she was speaking with the police, she heard a call come in to the officers reporting that a girl had drowned in the River Irwell.

The officers then asked Ms Ture for a photograph of Shukri to help identify to the girl.

Over a mile away, in a stretch of the river off Dunster Road, police and fire service search crews and divers combed the water ­— which in parts plunges to depths of 20ft ­— for almost three hours, before making a tragic discovery.

At her home, after hours of agonising waiting, Ms Ture was given the heart-rending news that Shukri’s body had been found and taken to the hospital, and she was asked to come to go and identify her daughter.

Ms Ture said: “When I went to the hospital and was about to enter the room, I couldn’t go in and I fell to the ground. I couldn’t bear to see her.”

Police confirmed they are treating the incident as a “tragic accident” and said they do not believe there are any suspicious circumstances surrounding Shukri’s death.

However, Ms Ture, her family and the Somali community are now desperately searching for closure.

And with many questions still left unanswered about how and why Shukri came to be in the water, the schoolgirl’s mother says she fears for the wellbeing of her and her family.

Ms Ture said: “I feel scared. I left my country to get away and get to a safe place where I can raise my children and have a better life.

“But I think the place we have found is worse.

“Where we come from horrible things happen all the time, so you expect it at any time. But here I was expecting to be safe and this has happened.

“I no longer feel safe in my house, in this area, I don’t even feel safe for my children to make friends.”