2023-08-13 15:08:15
A photo published by the French navy shows a search and rescue operation carried out by British and French ships, in the English Channel, after the sinking of a migrant boat on August 12, 2023. AFP
Since the port of Calais and the Channel Tunnel were locked in 2018 to prevent attempts to cross migrants by truck to the United Kingdom, almost every year has seen at least one deadly shipwreck of small boatthis small inflatable boat whose use has exploded in recent years for candidates to cross the Strait of Pas-de-Calais.
Saturday, August 12, at dawn, an inflatable boat carrying 65 to 66 men trying to reach the English coast – mostly Afghans, with a few Sudanese and minors – capsized in the waters of the Channel, off Sangatte (Pas-de-Calais).
Six Afghans died, and uncertainty still reigned Sunday about the possibility that passengers were still missing. “We don’t know if we are really looking for someone”said the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, which had reported the day before, one or two potential missing, while the search continued in the strait.
A punctured inflatable boat
“It’s pretty hard, they’re humans. (…) We’ll never get used to bringing back the dead.”told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the skipper of the canoe Our Lady of Risban, of the National Sea Rescue Society, which recovered five of the six exiles found dead to bring their bodies back to Calais. But “there will still be other tragedies”he predicted: migrants “want to pass, they try everything for everything, they gave everything (…)it will never end”.
About sixty survivors of the shipwreck were rescued alive: thirty-six were dropped off at the port of Calais by the French coastguards, and twenty-two or twenty-three were dropped off at Dover by British means, said know in a press release the maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea. The boat, an inflatable boat recovered punctured, will be appraised, said the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor’s office, which relinquished the investigation on Sunday, in favor of that of Paris.
The National Jurisdiction in charge of the fight against organized crime (Junalco) in Paris has taken up this investigation opened for “involuntary homicides and injuries, assistance with illegal residence and association of criminals”, specified the Paris prosecutor’s office. Junalco seized the border police, the research section of the maritime gendarmerie and the Office for the fight against the illicit trafficking of migrants.
2022, record year
Since Wednesday evening, crossing attempts have multiplied with the return of good weather. London thus recorded, for the single day of Thursday August 10, 755 arrivals – a record since the beginning of the year –, and around a thousand migrants are still waiting for passage, according to the French authorities.
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