Migrant dies trying to cross Channel to England

This is the seventh death since mid-July. A migrant died while attempting to cross the Channel to England in an overloaded boat, the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea (Premar) announced on Sunday, July 28. This person was discovered unconscious in a boat “very busy”, some of whose passengers requested assistance, Premar told AFP, describing a “new phenomenon of people dying at sea but not by drowning, illness or jostling”.

According to Premar, there were around 75 people on board the boat and 35 were rescued, while the others continued on their way. The boat had been reported during the night from Saturday to Sunday off the coast of Calais, at the Gris-Nez regional operational surveillance and rescue centre (CROSS).

The CROSS had then sent a gendarmerie vessel and a customs coastguard patrol boat to the area at around 5:30 a.m. It was during the transfer of people in difficulty on board the two vessels that it was “noted” that one of them was “inanimate”the prefecture said. The victim was airlifted to the Boulogne-sur-Mer hospital but was then “declared dead”reports Premar.

This new death in the Channel comes on top of a dark series of shipwrecks in mid-July. Between July 12 and 19, six migrants died in three separate shipwrecks. Over the whole of 2023, twelve migrants died trying to reach England by sea, according to the Premar report. A human toll already largely exceeded in 2024, with 23 deaths since the beginning of January, according to the prefecture’s count.