The body of a man washed up on a beach on the Wadden Sea island of Texel last October is that of a 22-year-old Syrian electrical engineering student, DNA research has shown.

The man is thought to have died while attempting to swim from Calais in France across the Channel to England. He was wearing a wetsuit which had been bought in the French port, news agency ANP reports on Monday.

Another man wearing a similar wetsuit washed up in Norway in January, which prompted a Norwegian journalist to investigate.

He visited Calais and found a Syrian man whose nephew had gone missing seven months earlier. DNA results found no connection with the Norwegian body but did turn out to match that of the young man on Texel.

Buried in an unmarked grave on the island, he has now been identified as Mouaz Al Balkhi, a student from Damascus, who had been hoping to join family members in England.

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