A two-year-old child was crushed to death and three other migrants died in two attempts to cross the Channel from France on Saturday.
French authorities said the infant died after being trampled on following a “wave of panic” among migrants trying to board a dinghy.
At the bottom of a second dinghy, rescuers found the bodies of two men and a woman, all aged in their 30s.
According to France Bleu radio in the area, the first dinghy requested help at about 7am on Saturday, and a rescue vessel, the Abeille Normandie, was sent in response. The dinghy was not sinking but was overcrowded.
“A person on the dinghy called us to ask for help. She said over the telephone that a child was dead and that if they were not helped, everyone would die,” Célestin Pichaud, a local coordinator of French charity Utopia 56, told the radio station.
The local prefect, Jacques Billant, said rescue teams had acted immediately after being alerted to the death of the child in the first boat on Saturday morning. He said the mother, a 24-year-old from Somalia who had given birth to the child in Germany, was being treated by medics.
“The rescue team helicoptered couldn’t save [the child] and the child was declared dead,” Billant said.
A 17-year-old passenger from the same dinghy was taken by helicopter to hospital with burns to his leg. Billant said 14 migrants were transported back to land but added that a number of passengers refused help and insisted on continuing their crossing to the UK.
In the second vessel, containing more than 83 migrants, “several failures of the motor led to a movement of panic” and several passengers fell into the sea,” Billant said. All were rescued. The remaining passengers wanted to continue their crossing but finally agreed to be rescued. After rescuers evacuated the boat, the three bodies were discovered.
Billant said it was thought they had been crushed and suffocated in the panic and had drowned in 40cm of water at the bottom of the inflatable. “Despite attempts by doctors they were also declared dead,” he said.
The migrants involved in both incidents came from Eritrea, Vietnam, Afghanistan Iran, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Kuwait and Iraq, he added.
Billant condemned the people traffickers who he said were risking the lives of people in vessels of “deplorable quality”.
“We deplore the fact the traffickers take even greater risk with people’s lives, not only adults but more and more families with children, babies to whom they sell a passage across a dangerous sea in an inappropriate vessel,” Billant said.
“I repeat, with force, these vessels are overcrowded, underpowered, under-inflated, and there are not lifejackets for all occupants, as is often the case and was the case for both cases this morning. And yet migrants continue to take to the sea each time the weather conditions are favourable.”
He said the authorities had prevented 31 crossings involving 250 migrants since Thursday.
As well as the “deplorable quality” of the vessels, he said the traffickers were “major criminals” who showed “no consideration for the lives of these children, women and men”.
A police spokesperson said investigations had been ordered into both tragedies.
France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, posted on X: “This appalling tragedy should make us all aware of the catastrophe that is unfolding. The people smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who enrich themselves by organising these crossings of death.”
On Friday, the Home Office announced G7 countries had agreed “a major new international plan to smash the criminal gangs responsible for smuggling illegal migrants into the UK”.
Ministers said the new plan would bolster border security, combat transnational organised crime and protect vulnerable people from exploitation by people smugglers. The agreement was reached after discussions by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, at the G7 interior and security ministers’ meeting in Avellino, Italy.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “This is yet another devastating and preventable tragedy. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families. Each of these lives represents someone who was seeking safety and the hope of a future free from war and persecution.
“There have been many more deaths this year compared to last which is a clear indication that a different approach is urgently needed. It is vital that the government now adopts a multipronged strategy to tackle dangerous crossings, that includes not just seeking to disrupt the gangs but also providing more safe and legal routes for refugees, as well as meaningful collaboration with European partners.”
On Friday, 395 people crossed in seven boats, after a lull due to poor weather conditions, according to Home Office figures.
Source: theguardian.com
