The photographer who captured the heartbreaking image of drowned ­3-year-old refugee Aylan Kurdi said she was “petrified” when she saw his body on a Turkish beach — but felt compelled to snap the picture.

“The only thing I could do was to make heard his outcry,” Nilufer Demir told Turkey’s Dogan News Agency, for which she works. “At that moment, I believed I would be able to achieve this by triggering the shutter of my camera and took his picture.”

Demir said she then noticed the body of Aylan’s 5-year-old brother, Galip, in the sand.

She has been documenting the plight of refugees for 12 years.