At least 12 dead in attempt to cross Channel, French authorities say

At least 12 people died after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of northern France on Tuesday while attempting to cross the English Channel, French authorities said. It was the deadliest episode in the waterway this year as the French and British governments struggle to prevent attempts at the perilous crossing.

Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said on the social media platform X that the ship sank off the coast of Wimereux, in an area of ​​the Pas-de-Calais region where several similar tragedies have occurred this year. Two people are still missing and several others were injured, Mr Darmanin said.

“All government services are being mobilised to find the missing and care for the victims,” he said.

French maritime authorities said in a statement that dozens of people fell into the sea on Tuesday morning after their vessel ran into unknown difficulties off the coast of Cap Gris-Nez, which in some places is less than 30 miles from the British coastline.

Rescue workers have pulled 65 people from the water, some of them in critical condition, and rescue operations involving helicopters and fishing and naval vessels are continuing, maritime authorities said in a statement. Frédéric Cuvillier, the mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, a nearby town, said in a statement that nearly 70 people were on board the boat when it sank.

French authorities have not released the names of the deceased, nor where they came from. The cause of death has also not been disclosed.

One of the worst migrant accidents in the Channel occurred in 2021, when 27 people died after their boat capsized, but similar tragedies have occurred repeatedly on a smaller scale. Five people died at sea near Wimereux in January; five people died in similar circumstances in the same area in April.

Last week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to step up cooperation across the Channel and dismantle the people-smuggling networks that authorities on both sides of the waterway say are responsible for the repeated deaths.

“Leaders agreed to do more together to dismantle smuggling routes further upstream and increase intelligence sharing,” Mr Starmer’s office said in a statement after the two leaders met in Paris.

Nearly 36,000 people attempting to reach Britain were targeted by search and rescue operations in the Channel in 2023, up from more than 51,000 in 2022, according to a report by French maritime authorities.

But the average number of people per boat has grown from 30 to 50, making a dangerous crossing even more dangerous, the report said. Last year, 12 people died trying to cross in the French search and rescue zone, the report said.

The Channel is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes. The waters are freezing cold, especially in winter, the winds can be treacherous and migrants attempting to cross often crowd into rickety inflatable boats.

“It is a particularly dangerous sector, even when the sea appears calm,” maritime authorities said in their statement on Tuesday.

Most of those attempting to cross the Channel leave from Pas-de-Calais. Many come from Afghanistan, Albania, Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and Syria, according to French authorities, and they gather in makeshift camps on the coast of northern France before attempting the crossing.

Many people would rather take the risk of travelling to France than staying in France, as they see Britain as an attractive destination with a strong labour market where English is spoken, and they may already have family living there or know people from their home country.

At least 19,294 people have arrived in England via the Channel in small boats since the start of 2024, according to UK government data. That is similar to the number of arrivals in the first eight months of the previous year.

The arrival of small boats across the Channel has become a major point of political tension in Britain after the former Conservative government vowed to stop the boats and introduced a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Mr Starmer’s Labour government announced it would scrap those plans after a landslide victory in July. Since then, however, the issue of immigration has taken centre stage, with far-right riots tearing through cities across Britain this summer.

Although the number of boat people has risen significantly since 2018, they represent a fraction of total immigration to Britain. Most people making the crossing are asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution.

According to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, around 93 percent of people who arrived in small boats between 2018 and March 2024 applied for asylum. Of those who received a decision by March 31, 2024, around three-quarters were successful.

Yvette Cooper, the British Home Secretary, whose office oversees immigration to the country, called Tuesday’s deaths “an appalling and deeply tragic incident.”

“The gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives are cramming more and more people into increasingly unsafe rowing boats and sending them out into the Channel even in the worst weather,” she said. “They care about nothing but the profit they make.”

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, a British charity that supports asylum seekers and refugees, said in a statement on Tuesday that “the number of deaths in the Channel this year has been shockingly high.”

British and French authorities agreed last year that Britain would pay France £541 million, currently more than $700 million, over three years to help pay for drones, a new detention centre and hundreds of extra police officers to patrol beaches in northern France – one of several deals the two countries have struck in recent years to try to reduce the number of border crossings.

But “enforcement alone is not the answer,” Mr Solomon said. “Increased security and policing measures on the French coast have led to increasingly dangerous crossings, with vessels operating from more dangerous locations and in unstable, overcrowded vessels.”

He added that the British government must take action against the criminal gangs often responsible for smuggling people across the Channel, but also “develop a plan to improve and expand safe routes for those seeking safety.”

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