Four migrants, including a two-year-old child, died on Saturday during two attempts to reach England by crossing the Channel from France on small boats.
The two-year-old child was discovered unresponsive in a first boat and three adult migrants died in another boat, said the prefect of Pas-de-Calais (north) Jacques Billant, establishing the toll at 51 people who died in these crossings aboard makeshift boats since the start of the year.
According to the public prosecutor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the first elements indicate that the child died “crushed” in the boat.
“A terrible drama which must make us all aware of the tragedy that is playing out. The smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who enrich themselves by organizing these death crossings,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on X.
Saturday morning, an “overloaded” migrant boat requested assistance from the tug ship Abeille Normandie, according to the AFP account from the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea.
Fourteen people who were on board this boat were picked up by the ship, including a deceased “minor” person and an injured person, who is still unknown if she is a minor, according to a report communicated by Premar. This injured person was airlifted to a local hospital.
According to Olivier Barbarin, mayor of Portel (north), the town off which the rescue took place, the rescued migrants landed at the commercial port of Portel.
The canoe continued on its way
Premar specifies that it is not a shipwreck, the dead child having been found in the boat. Several sea rescue operations were still underway in the afternoon.
Since January, more than 25,000 migrants have arrived on British shores after crossing the Channel aboard makeshift boats, a figure up 4% according to statistics from the British Interior Ministry published on September 23.
A series of shipwrecks has made 2024 the deadliest year since the beginning in 2018 of the phenomenon of crossings aboard makeshift inflatable boats (called small boats), in response to the increasingly tight locking of access to the tunnel under the Channel and the port of Calais.
On the night of September 14 to 15, eight migrants were killed in the sinking of a boat which had just left the French coast, carrying around 60 passengers.
On September 3, at least twelve others died when their boat broke apart off Cap Gris-Nez in the worst shipwreck of 2024 to date.
Migrants have also died crushed or trampled during crossing attempts this year, such as Dina Al Shammari, a 21-year-old Kuwaiti woman, who died on July 28, crushed in an overloaded canoe.
Elected in July, the British government of Labor Keir Starmer promised to tackle illegal immigration by increasing the number of deportations of migrants and fighting against smugglers.
According to the British authorities, makeshift boats are increasingly loaded, with 52 passengers on average compared to only 13 in 2020.
Between June 2023 and June 2024, 18% of people arriving by these boats were from Afghanistan, a figure in sharp decline, followed by Iran (13%) and Vietnam (10%).