Twelve people died This Tuesday when the boat in which they were trying to cross the English sleeve from France to the United Kingdom, French authorities announced.51 people were rescued“, including two very serious ones”, and there are also two missing people, reported the interim Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in a press release from Boulogne sur Mer, the port closest to the scene of the accident.
Among the deceased there are “a dozen women“Several of them would be minors,” added Darmanin, who explained that there were “about seventy people gathered“by traffickers in what he described as a “drama”. For this reason, he said that “smugglers are real criminals” who “earn a lot of money” in exchange for putting irregular migrants in danger.
The minister recalled that a total of 1,700 police officers and gendarmes “are mobilized every day” to monitor the northern coasts of France and demanded that the European Union and London negotiate and sign “a treaty on migration.”
Darmanin highlighted the reaction “extremely fast“emergency services, who mobilised ten air and naval units, including two fishing boats, after receiving the alert that the migrants’ boat was experiencing problems.
The shipwrecked migrants came from Africa, apparently mostly from Eritrea, according to Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor Guirec le Bras, who added that an investigation has been opened for several serious accusations against the traffickers responsible for this expedition. The incident occurred in the Boulonnais region, in the Pas-de-Calais department (northern France).
The Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea detailed in a press release that ten naval and air assets were sent after receiving an alert that there was a migrant boat in difficulty. He also added that an emergency medical post had been set up in Boulogne sur Mer to treat the victims. The accident is the deadliest so far this year among migrants trying to reach the British coast from France by sea.
With today’s victims, a total of 25 people have died on this route since the beginning of the year. The Channel is one of the busiest maritime areas in the world, with About 600 commercial ships pass through every dayin an area where weather conditions are often harsh, with strong winds making it particularly dangerous even when the waters appear calm. Last year, a total of 29,437 people reached British soil after crossing the Channel irregularly, 36% fewer than the record of 45,774 in 2022, according to official British figures.
