Shipwreck in the English Channel | Eight migrants die off the French coast

(Ambleteuse) Eight migrants died off the French coast when their illegal boat sank overnight from Saturday to Sunday, bringing the number of people seeking exile to Great Britain who died in the Channel in 2024 to more than 46.

The victims of this shipwreck are “obviously adults,” declared the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais department (North), Jacques Billant, during a press conference. Six survivors were hospitalized in relative emergency, including a 10-month-old baby with hypothermia, he added.

The clandestine boat had nearly 60 passengers, “from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran,” and “only one person in six was equipped with a life jacket,” the prefect stressed.

The boat, which had set off from a coastal river, “ran aground” on a rocky point and “clearly tore itself apart on the rocks,” he explained.

“It’s horrible. It’s another loss of life,” British Foreign Minister David Lammy told the BBC.

“These people died because of France and England, who refused to open passageways,” lamented the migrant aid association Utopia 56 on X.

“Deadly border”

“The French and British states must rethink their migration policy immediately,” demanded the Auberge des Migrants, another association helping exiles, on the same social network, describing the Channel as a “deadly border.”

This latest tragedy occurred less than two weeks after the worst shipwreck of the year in this region, which left twelve dead on September 3.

According to the prefect, it brings to 46 the number of deaths in such clandestine crossings since January, confirming that 2024 is by far the deadliest year since the start of the phenomenon of makeshift boats crossing the Channel in 2018.

Thanks to a favourable weather window, numerous crossing attempts have taken place in recent days.

In 24 hours between Friday and Saturday, “200 shipwrecked people were rescued,” the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea (Prémar) reported on Saturday evening. Over the course of the day, “18 attempts at boat departures were monitored.”

In Ambleteuse, after the shipwreck during the night, a second departure took place around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, reported Christine Leclair, a volunteer in a local association. Departures “are all the time, winter, day, night, summer […]as soon as the sea is calm,” she stressed.

The tragedies have been happening one after the other since the beginning of the summer. In mid-July, six migrants died in one week in three separate shipwrecks: four on July 12, an Eritrean woman on the 17th and a man on the 19th.

Perilous crossings

These attempts to cross are being made in particularly perilous conditions, on makeshift boats. According to figures from the British authorities, the boats that have arrived on British shores since 1^er January averages 52 passengers, compared to just 13 in 2020.

During the shipwreck of September 3, “fewer than eight people had a life jacket provided by the smugglers,” deplored Gérald Darmanin, the resigning French Minister of the Interior.

He then called for the signing of a “migration treaty between Great Britain and the European Union” to try to put an end to illegal departures.

Since the start of the year, more than 22,000 migrants have arrived in England after crossing the Channel by boat, according to British authorities.

In six years, nearly 136,000 people have crossed the Channel on these ” small boats ” from France since the UK began recording such arrivals in 2018. The phenomenon has developed in response to the growing lockdown of the Channel Tunnel and the port of Calais to stem migrant intrusions.

Elected in July, the British government of Keir Starmer has promised to tackle illegal immigration by increasing the number of migrant deportations and cracking down on people smugglers.

The United Kingdom was rocked this summer by violent far-right riots following the murder of three girls on July 29, amid partly denied rumours that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker.