Canadian media outlets said Alexander had returned to Ottawa from the campaign trail on Thursday after an opposition parliamentarian Fin Donnelly said that earlier this year he had brought the Syrian family's case to Alexander's attention.

Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper quoted an unnamed senior Canadian official as saying that Alexander had "just got back to Ottawa because of the situation he woke up to."

An aunt of the drowned three-year-old Alyan Kurdi living in the Vancouver area, Fatima Kurdi told Canada's National Post newspaper that the family's refugee application was rejected by Canadian authorities in June.

"I was trying to sponsor them, and I have my neighbors who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn't get them out, and that is why they went in the boat," she said.

Canada's Department of Citizenship and Immigration later on Thursday denied that assertion, saying no request had ever been made specifically for the boy's family.

Images of Alyan face-down in the surf circulated world-wide on Thursday, spawning outrage at the perceived inaction of developed nations.

Alyan, his 5-year-old brother Galip and mother Rehan, 35, from Syria's war-torn town of Kobani were among 12 people who drowned while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos from Turkey's Aegean resort peninsula of Bodrum.

Only the father, Abdullah, survived the family tragedy when two fragile boats capsized on Tuesday night.

Aunt's written plea handed to minister

Canadian opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) legislator Fin Donnelly from British Colombia province told CBC television that he had personally delivered a letter from the aunt to immigration minister Alexander.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair on a campaign stop in Toronto said: "These kids, the older brother could have been going to school next week in Canada. This is hard for everyone. It's a failure by the international community, it is a failure for Canada,"

Minister defends record

Late on Wednesday, Alexander, during an appearance on CBC, defended the refugee handling record of the conservative government headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Trying to ascertain the facts, says Canada's Alexander

"We are the most generous country for refugees in the world," said Alexander, who until Wednesday had been campaigning in his federal electorate of Ajax.

"I was deeply saddened by that image," Alexander said, referring to the photo of Aylan.

Alexander's office added on Thursday that Canada had set a target to accept 11,300 Syrians and 23,000 Iraqi refugees.

The minister was meeting officials, it said, to ascertain "the facts of the case of the Kurdi family and to receive an update on the migrant crisis."

Harper's conservative government is seeking re-election in Canada's 19 October federal election.

Canada failing short

Opposition Liberal leader Justin Trudeau accused Harper's nine-year-old conservative government of failing to meet its own refugee resettlement targets, saying it had not "once lived up to even its meager commitments in terms of accepting refugees from Syria and elsewhere."

Last December, Canada's government launched a new immigration program to attract 50 multimillionaires. In July, it emerged that it had received just six applications.

Suspected smugglers detained

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said four suspected people-smugglers were detained Thursday on suspicion of acting as intermediaries in the case.

United Nations refugee agency representative in Britain, Laura Padoan said photographs of Aylan could well change the public's perception of the burgeoning crisis.

"I think a lot of people will think about their own families and their own children in relation to those images," she said. "It is difficult for politicians to turn their backs on those kind of images and the very real tragedy that is happening."

Turkey President said his country was had close to two million refugees, "many times more" that those who had reached prosperous Western countries.

Turkish DHA news agency photographer Nilüfer Demir, who took the widely circulated photos, said among the bodies of Aylan, his brother and mother on the beach there was no sign of "life jackets, swim armbands or anything else" that could have kept their heads above the surface of the water.

ipj/jm (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)