Five migrants died and a sixth was in a critical condition on Sunday after trying to reach Britain from northern France in freezing temperatures, French maritime authorities said.
More than 30 people have been rescued, the maritime province said in a statement.
The death is the first migrant death reported in the Channel in 2024.
Authorities said four migrants died overnight, while the bodies of a fifth were found later on the beach.
The group was trying to reach a vessel outside the resort town of Wimereux when their small boat ran into difficulties around 2 a.m. (0100 GMT), the maritime province said.
The crew of the French tugboat Abeille Normandie went to the rescue and saw an “unconscious and lifeless person” in the water, an official said, estimating the water temperature at nine degrees Celsius.
Along the Wimereux embankment an AFP reporter saw items of clothing and shoes left behind by migrants.
The survivors were taken to a shelter in Calais.
More than 30 people were rescued. AFP via Getty Images
‘The whole family’
According to the maritime region, more than 30 people were rescued, but one, who did not want to be named, said about 70 migrants were brought in around 3am, including “whole families with children, some of them still small”.
“Some of the survivors did not stay and told us they wanted to go to the Dunkirk train station to get to the accommodation center in Armentieres,” the source added.
Authorities are launching an investigation into “mass murder” and other crimes, the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor’s office told AFP.
An autopsy will determine the cause of death, which may have been “drowning” or “heat shock”, prosecutors said.
“Some of the survivors did not stay and told us they wanted to go to the Dunkirk train station to get to the accommodation center in Armentieres,” the source added. AFP via Getty Images
Jean-Claude Lenoir, head of the Salam association, said migrants were taking a big risk by trying to board larger ships in the water in the current conditions.
“Foreigners want to board the ship by any means,” he told AFP. “They quickly become victims of hypothermia or drowning.”
Twelve migrants lost their lives in 2023 trying to cross the Strait, according to the maritime region.
The region around Calais, the jumping-off point for the shortest crossing to England, has long been a magnet for migrants.
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More than two decades after the closure of the Red Cross center in Sangatte, hundreds of people are still living in tents and makeshift shelters near Calais and Dunkirk, hoping for a chance to make a hidden crossing in a truck or on a small boat.
The boats are a political priority for the British government and a bone of contention with France, as tens of thousands of people a year make the perilous crossing.
‘Human trafficking’
The British government has gone ahead with plans to deport migrants, who arrived illegally on British soil, to Rwanda.
“It breaks my heart, but it just shows that we have to stop the boats, we have to stop this illegal human trafficking,” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron told the BBC, referring to the latest tragedy.
“The only way you can stop the boats is to bust the people-trafficking model.”
Labor opposition leader Keir Starmer, who is widely tipped to become prime minister later this year, said: “To lose your life in a dinghy or a boat in winter, in the Straits is a terrible thing.”
But he slammed the Rwandan scheme as a “gimmick” and said authorities had to go after people smugglers.
“I refuse to accept that somehow this group is untouchable, and we can’t do anything about it,” he told the BBC.
According to London, almost 30,000 migrants crossed the Channel from mainland Europe to Britain in small boats in 2023, an annual drop of more than a third.
Afghans, Iranians, Turks, Eritreans and Iraqis make up the majority of immigrants.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
