Eight migrants dead after overloaded boat capsizes in English Channel

Incident happened in early hours of Sunday off coast of northern France

The remains of the boat that was carrying eight migrants who died while trying to cross the English Channel. AFP

Eight migrants died after their overloaded boat capsized during an attempt to cross the English Channel from France to Britain, French authorities have said.

The incident happened off the coast of Ambleteuse in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France some time on Saturday night into Sunday morning.

A French rescue ship was sent to the area and rescue services offered medical assistance to 53 people on the beach, the French maritime authorities in charge of the Channel and the North Sea said. “Despite the emergency care provided, eight people have died,” it said. No one was discovered during the search at sea, it added.

Six people were taken to hospital “in relative emergency”, including a 10-month-old with hypothermia, Jacques Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, told French media on Sunday.

He said survivors of the accident were from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran.

Survivors have been taken to the sports hall in Ambleteuse, the prefecture of Pas-de-Calais region said. The prosecutor's office in Boulogne-sur-Mer has opened an investigation into the accident.

Maritime authorities said numerous attempts by asylum seekers to make the perilous crossing in small boats have been attempted in recent days, with 200 people rescued in 24 hours over Friday and Saturday alone. The latest accident occurred shortly after the vessel embarked, a source said.

It comes less than two weeks after 12 people died when their boat sank in the Channel. A pregnant woman and six children were among the dead on September 3, with up to 65 people rescued off the coast of Cape Gris-Nez. Most of those in the boat that capsized were from Eritrea.

The UK's Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Sunday: “It's awful. It's a further loss of life.”

He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme he had been to the National Crime Agency and seen the “awful sort of rubber dinghies that people are coming across the Channel with, many of them, of course, not able to make it in these contraptions”.

Mr Lammy said the government has been “discussing how we go after those gangs, in co-operation upstream with other European partners”.

The number of migrants packed on to each boat crossing the English Channel has reached a new high, making the journeys on the flimsy craft more perilous, analysis of data by The National reveals.

Boats now carry on average more than 60 asylum seekers and often that figure reaches 70 and above, while the boats typically remain the same size used in earlier attempts.

More than 30 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year and compared to 15 for the whole of last year and five in 2022, when the total number of asylum seekers crossing to the UK peaked.

The increasing number of deaths of migrants in the English Channel is being directly linked to the overcrowding.

The boats become more unstable and when they encounter trouble, more passengers are at risk. This year has seen a disturbing phenomenon arise in which the sheer numbers getting on to boats have resulted in migrants being crushed to death, alongside the constant danger of drowning.

Since the beginning of this year 22,000 migrants have arrived in England by crossing the Channel.

The UK Home Office is working closely with police in Libya to target gangs trafficking migrants towards Europe, with raids on warehouses where refugees are housed, often in appalling conditions.

In addition, UK National Crime Agency (NCA) has increased the number of officers based at Europol, who will work on organised immigration crime, by 50 per cent.

As one of the UK's first steps to strengthen international law enforcement and partnership arrangements, NCA officers have also been placed in Austria and Romania, with more assigned to South-east Asia, in countries where gangs are advertising Channel crossings.