PHOTOS: Nigerian siblings in distress as mother dies in the Mediterranean

Imagine being a child, and you are informed by your parent that the family would be seeking greener pastures across the pond, but the tortuous quest turns out to be a tragedy.

Countless Nigerians ― on a daily basis ― embark on a journey to Europe, through the back door, just to escape the crippling economic conditions back home.

While many make it, for many others, it is their last journey before finding cold solace among the sea beds of the Mediterranean sea.

Except if their corpses are recovered.

Two children ― siblings ― of ages 10 and 11, recently lost their mother on one of those ill-fated trips embarked upon by African migrants to Europe.

The pair, whose collective anguish, was captured on camera, were among 150 migrants recently rescued from an overcrowded rubber boat.

They were rescued along the coast of Libya as they attempted to transverse the Mediterranean into Italy.

Oblivious of the camera and the photographer who captured their pain, the siblings cried their lungs out just as they sought to console one another.

Three-thousand-and-thirty-four migrants and refugees have died in 2016 alone, while trying to cross the Mediterranean from sub-saharan Africa.

A total of 70,930 migrants arrived in Italy between January and June this year, according to the country’s ministry of interior.

The International Organization for Migration said it discovered 39 bodies on Libyan shores this week.