At least 12 dead in attempted Channel crossing
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At least 12 people have died while attempting to cross the Channel from France to England by boat on Tuesday, in the worst accident in months.
France’s caretaker interior minister Gérald Darmanin wrote on X there had been a “terrible shipwreck in the Pas-de-Calais”. He added two people are known to be missing in addition to the dozen who have died, while several have also been injured.
French emergency services said more than 50 people had been rescued in the incident, after a boat ran into trouble on Tuesday morning and rescuers sent out helicopters and fishing boats to help.
There have already been several deadly accidents this year of migrants seeking to cross the Channel on small boats.
More than 19,000 people have crossed from France in small boats so far this year according to UK Home Office data, slightly below last year’s figure, and lower than 2022 when a record number made the journey between January and the start of September.
Under successive governments, the UK and France have been trying to deepen their collaboration to police and deter the crossings, with mixed results. These efforts were renewed after a particularly deadly disaster in November 2021, when 27 migrants drowned in the Dover-Calais strait.
The accident shocked both nations at the time, with a Le Monde investigation revealing French coastal rescue services might have mishandled emergency telephone calls and not responded quickly enough. A judicial investigation is ongoing.
But some of the efforts to deter the crossings across the strait and crack down on people smugglers have made people attempt more hazardous journeys on different parts of the French coast, or even push into Belgium.
The latest deaths come after a series of accidents already since a Labour government was elected in the UK in July, and at a time when Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is seeking to shift away from some of the previous Conservative administration’s anti-immigration policies.
In France, the government is in caretaker mode after a snap legislative election called by President Emmanuel Macron this summer delivered a hung parliament.