Twelve migrants die in shipwreck in the English Channel

Photo: Denis Charlet Agence France-Presse Firefighters carry the bodies of migrants who died trying to cross the English Channel to England in Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France, on September 3, 2024.

Agence France-Presse in Boulogne-sur-Mer

Published at 10:16 Updated at 11:40

• Europe

At least twelve migrants, according to a still provisional report from the French authorities, died on Tuesday when the boat on which they were trying to reach England broke apart, a tragedy that makes 2024 the deadliest year since the beginning of Channel crossings on makeshift boats.

The boat got into difficulty off the coast of France, near Cap Gris Nez, late in the morning with more than 60 people on board, reported the Manche maritime prefecture. A ship chartered by the French state, the Minck, which had spotted it, came to its aid as soon as it broke apart, according to Lieutenant Etienne Baggio to AFP.

According to the resigning Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, the toll reached 12 dead, two missing and “several injured”.

In London, the British government described the deaths of these migrants as “horrible and profoundly tragic”.

France indicated that it had taken in 65 shipwreck victims, 12 of whom were declared dead at sea, and several others hospitalized in a serious.

In addition to the Minck, firefighter and Navy helicopters, two fishing boats and military vessels are being mobilised for the search, which is still ongoing.

An advanced medical post was deployed to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where significant emergency resources were mobilized, AFP journalists noted.

Record crossings

Charlotte Kwantes, from the migrant aid association Utopia 56, denounced to AFP a policy of police repression on the French coast that is “completely ineffective […] which leads to repeated incidents and tragedies […]”.

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The head of the British association Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, called for “improved legal access for those seeking safety”, particularly those arriving from Afghanistan, Syria or Sudan.

“The reinforcement of security measures on the French coast has led to increasingly perilous crossings, from more dangerous starting points, in increasingly fragile and overloaded boats,” he lamented.

With Tuesday's shipwreck, at least 37 people have lost their lives in these crossings since January 2024, making it the deadliest year since the start of the phenomenon of makeshift boats on the Channel.

In 2021, 30 migrants died in the Channel, including 27 in a single shipwreck in November.

In total, 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.

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

At the end of July, a 21-year-old woman was crushed to death by other passengers in an overloaded dinghy, and two other migrants died in a shipwreck on August 11.

In the first six months of 2024, illegal crossings of the Channel to the United Kingdom reached a record number, according to British authorities, who on Tuesday counted the arrival by this means of 21,615 migrants since January.

The British Prime Minister, who came to power in early July, Keir Starmer has announced that he wants to speed up the processing of asylum seekers' files while toughening up the fight against people smugglers.

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

The British government promised last week to sharply increase the number of returns to their home countries of failed asylum seekers and people still in the UK illegally.