The three people were part of a boat carrying 56 passengers, which was rescued during the day on Wednesday. The search to find the two missing people has been abandoned.
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New drama in the Channel. More than a month after an attempted crossing which caused the death of five people, a migrant died and two others are missing off the coast of Calais, assured the maritime prefecture on Wednesday February 28. In the middle of the day, the 56 passengers of the boat on which these three migrants were seated asked to be rescued, reported the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea (Prémar) in a press release.
The migrants then informed the crew that these “three people fell into the sea earlier in the day during the crossing attempt”, assures the press release. Search operations carried out by a helicopter and a patrol boat made it possible to relocate “three people adrift, one of whom is already submerged”. Sea rescue recovered “a first person, unconscious”, which could not be “resuscitated on board” and was “declared dead at the dock”.
Abandoned searches
During the search, weather conditions deteriorated and made “difficult investigations”, explained Prémar. The other two people reported “could not be relocated and recovered by the aeronautical and maritime means present”. The area of disappearance having been “fully investigated”, the maritime prefect has decided “to stop the search”.
The shipwrecked were taken care of at the end of the afternoon by the rescue services at the port of Calais and an investigation was opened by the Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor’s office. In total, 179 people were rescued offshore on Wednesday by French means during several separate operations, according to the maritime prefecture.
This is the second deadly tragedy of 2024 off the French coast. On the night of January 13 to 14, five migrants, including a 14-year-old Syrian teenager, died in Wimereux (Pas-de-Calais) while trying to reach a boat already at sea in water around 9° C, to win England. Twelve migrants lost their lives in 2023 while trying to cross the Channel, according to Prémar. That same year, 29,437 people reached English shores illegally, compared to 45,774 in 2022, a record year, according to figures from the British Home Office.