Six Afghans died when a migrant boat heading to Britain sank in the Channel on Saturday, French officials said, as a search continued to find those still missing.
"This shipwreck is a terrible human tragedy," French State Secretary for the Sea Herve Berville told reporters at the port of Calais, the hub for rescue operations.
He denounced "criminal traffickers" who send migrants "to their death" and pledged to fight their smuggling networks.
The deputy public prosecutor for the coastal city of Boulogne, Philippe Sabatier, told AFP all six fatalities were Afghan men believed to be in their 30s.
The rest of the passengers were "almost all Afghans with some Sudanese, mostly adults with some minors", he added.
The French and British coastguard services rescued 61 survivors, said Berville.
French coastal authority Premar said up to two people could still be missing and that search efforts would continue until nightfall.
"My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the tragic loss of life in the Channel today," British interior minister Suella Braverman said on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne posted that her "thoughts go out to the victims" as she praised the efforts of the rescue teams.
"It's pretty tough, they're humans. You will never get used to bringing back dead bodies," said Regis Holy, the captain of a boat that retrieved five of the victims.
"There will be even more tragedies... they (migrants) risk everything, it will never stop," he added.
A spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border "repression" for the tragedy, telling AFP the difficulty of securing legal passage only "increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England".
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart of the right-wing Republicans party denounced a "failure" by the French government to stop such crossings and demanded migrants be moved inland.
In England, the MP for the Channel port of Dover, Natalie Elphicke, a member of the ruling Conservative Party, also called for more effective French government action.
"Today's tragedy underlines why we must stop the small boats to keep people safe and prevent loss of life in the Channel," she wrote on Twitter, now known as X.
"These overcrowded and unseaworthy deathtraps should obviously be stopped by the French authorities from leaving the French coast in the first place," she added.
The boat capsized at around 2:00 am local time (0000 GMT) off the northern coast of France, according to the prosecutor.
An AFP reporter in Calais saw some of those rescued disembarking from a patrol boat with emergency services on site.
The Channel between France and Britain is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and strong currents are common.
Around 1,000 migrants are on the northern French coast waiting for an opportunity to cross the Channel, according to the authorities.
More than 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording the arrivals in 2018, official figures revealed on Friday.
French authorities have stepped up patrols and other deterrent measures after London agreed in March to send Paris hundreds of millions of euros annually towards the effort.
In recent days there have been several attempts to cross the Channel in boats after weather conditions improved.
Overnight Thursday, Premar reported that 116 migrants had been rescued, including children, on three separate boats.
Some 755 migrants were detected on Thursday on 14 small boats headed for England's southern coast, UK interior ministry statistics showed, the highest tally on a single day this year.
Those boats brought the number of arrivals so far this year to nearly 16,000.
The figures have piled pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government, which has made "stopping the boats" a key priority ahead of general elections due next year.
Five migrants died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross to Britain from France last year.
In November 2021, 27 migrants died when a boat capsized in the Channel.
The following year saw a record 45,000 migrants make the crossing.
© 2023 AFP
16 Comments
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Bad Haircut
While this is a tragedy, it's a completely avoidable one. What are the French doing to stop these people arriving illegally? The French are happy for them to pass through and make them the UK's problem, and this is what happens.
Strangerland
What should they be doing?
kintsugi
It will never be 100% preventable by the French or British only by arresting the smuggling gangs. There are British and French police on the French beaches. The problem is too great and the people are too desperate not to try anything.
There are not any easy and simple solutions.
More will die in the channel and also in the Mediterranean.
Mr Kipling
Yes the usual age and sex for these economic migrants. Escaping the "horrors" of their home country but leaving their sisters and mothers behind.
That is the number they know about, those undetected is unknown.
Yes more thoughts and prayers, that's what we need.
Desert Tortoise
So true. The most effective solutions will originate in the Middle East and not on a French beach. Reduce the conditions that drive people to flee their homelands. They are not doing this for fun. They are desperate to save their lives.
kintsugi
Germany, France, the UK, and the EU needs to tackle the cause, not the effect.
Strangerland
And how would they do that?
kintsugi
By making business investments in the countries of origin to increase jobs and encourage people to remain in their own countries. By giving aid. The costs to Europe are enormous.
EuroJP
The way Australia have done. Stop sending any shop so called "rescue" orchestrated by EU. Lock down NGO ships and people for helping smugglers. Italy and Greece have tried but so called Human Rights and EU want them more. Poland and Hungary are doing good jobs.
Strangerland
But the the right-wingers freak out about giving people in other countries money. So how do you deal with that?
Strangerland
Ahh, the punitive approach. Got it.
kintsugi
Strangerland
I am not a politician or economist so I don't have detailed solutions but the current situation does not work and is costing millions of something. Dealing with the cause has been pushed for decades.
No solutions will cause many more deaths.
Strangerland
I am not a politician or economist so I don't have detailed solutions but the current situation does not work and is costing millions of something. Dealing with the cause has been pushed for decades.
Yeah, it's one of those empty statements that make people feel better about their anger. "They just need to deal with the root of the problem", as if this is some simple solution, rather than an almost infinitely complex situation due to governments not being able to set rules in other countries without going to war and taking the other countries over.
Armchair quarterbacks will whine and blame politicians for not implementing some fantasy solution that doesn't exist anywhere other than the ideological fake world these people have made up in their minds.
kintsugi
Strangerland
We are all armchair quarterbacks on forums like JT including you. So what are your proposals to resolve the tragic situation which kills thousands including young children and babies?
Are you just in need of some personal vending?
My statement is not empty but I don't have personal power to implement policies in the EU/UK.
I am not angry, just a little sad about the tragic loss of lives.
Investment migration: an opportunity to improve and gain trust
https://www.politico.eu/sponsored-content/investment-migration-an-opportunity-to-improve-and-gain-trust/
Five migration solutions for Europe for 2023
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2022/12/06/migration-solutions-Europe-2023-policy-ideas
*
I wait for you to post your solutions.
albaleo
@kintsugi,
I agree with the points you have made about trying to deal with the cause. And I also don't know any good way to do that.
History suggest the movement of people has happened over thousands of years. Are we facing a similar pattern now?
JohnnyTheWad
NPD