Five migrants died this Tuesday while trying to cross the English Channel irregularly in an overloaded boat, which separates northwest France from the United Kingdom. The victims are three men, a woman and a 4-year-old girl, according to French authorities.
The tragedy took place around six in the morning near Wimereux (northern France) shortly after the boat carrying more than a hundred irregulars left the beach of this town in the direction of Great Britain.
“A few hundred meters from the coast, the engine stopped and several people fell into the water” after passing with difficulty over a sandbank, explained Jacques Billant, prefect of Pas-de-Calais, in a press conference.
The French coast guard quickly came to help the migrants, managing to rescue 48 of them. The majority were only slightly injured, but of the six people treated in serious condition on Wimereux beach, “five unfortunately could not be revived,” the prefecture explained.
Another 58 illegals traveling aboard the boat rejected help. After several attempts, they finally managed to get the engine started and continued their journey towards the United Kingdom, closely watched by a Gendarmerie patrol vessel. British authorities took charge of these undocumented migrants once they reached their shores.
Human traffickers
The fact that a hundred people were packed into this boat confirms “the particularly dangerous methods” of human traffickers, who do not hesitate to make “dramatic overloads on people's lives in order to achieve even more profits.” denounced the prefecture of Pas-de-Calais in a statement.
“These criminal networks put migrants at considerable risk, because going to sea in a boat overloaded with water at a maximum of ten degrees is going to death,” he added.
So far this year, 15 migrants have died trying to cross the English Channel, the second deadliest exercise since 2023, in which 37 migrants died, according to official data from Paris.
This new tragedy occurs after the British Parliament approved on Monday night the controversial law that will allow asylum seekers who have entered the United Kingdom irregularly through the English Channel to be sent to Rwanda.
In 2023, a total of 29,437 people arrived on the islands after irregularly crossing the English Channel in small boats. The record was broken in 2022, with 45,755, according to figures from the London Government. So far this year, 6,265 irregulars have achieved it, according to the British state television channel BBC.
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