English Channel smugglers refused to give life jackets to 6 migrants who drowned

13 August 2023 , 12:25

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Migrants picked up at sea while attempting to cross the English Channel yesterday (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

People smugglers refused to provide life jackets to the UK-bound migrants who drowned in the latest small boats disaster in the English Channel, it emerged today.

Instead, they packed the six Afghan men into one of a number of inflatable dinghies that left northern France in the early hours of Saturday morning with no emergency equipment.The aim was to stretch police resources across a number of beaches, making sure that as many people as possible got to Britain.

Details of the disaster emerged on Sunday as Hervé Berville, France’s Minister for the Sea, explained how smugglers are now "saturating" the coast with people who want to get to Britain. "There were a lot of people on the water last night, with a fairly rough sea," Mr Berville said during a visit to Calais this weekend. The smugglers have a strategy of saturating the coast - they trigger simultaneous crossings between Dunkirk and Boulogne, to occupy the police."

French officials say that gangs are saturating the coast of France with migrants whose final destination is the UK (AFP via Getty Images)

Describing the situation overnight Friday to Saturday as a "a mess", Mr Berville said: "Put 60 people on a boat in a force three or four wind, and it's deadly." He described the smugglers as "criminals, who send young people, women, adults to their death, through these dangerous maritime routes"’ On Sunday, the search continued for two men unaccounted for after six were confirmed dead in a boat that deflated off Sangatte, the Calais beach.

Régis Holy, skipper of the Notre-Dame du Brisban lifeboat, said he helped retrieve five of the bodies. He confirmed that none were wearing life jackets, and that the boat they had been passengers in "was punctured".

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"You don’t get used to it," Mr Holy told Liberation newspaper. "Handling a body is difficult, it is heavy, the clothes are wet." Mr Holy said it was initially impossible to see anybody in the dark, but French Navy aircraft then provided lights from above. Smugglers charge around £1000-a-head for a passage to Britain on a crowded boat, and usually provide life jackets as a basic safety measure. But August is seen as one of the best months for getting people across, and it is feared that the criminals are becoming ever more reckless.

The latest disaster comes almost two years to the day since the worst English Channel small boats accident ever. An inflatable dinghy with 29 people on board collapsed on November 24 2021, and the 27 who died were later identified as 16 Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan, four Afghans, and five other nationalities. French emergency workers in a telephone centre were later blamed for failing to answer their distress calls properly, but the people smugglers responsible for organising the boat have never been brought to justice. There were 755 people recorded as crossing the Channel in small boats on Thursday – the highest daily number so far this year. Since current records began in January 1 2018, 100,715 migrants have arrived in the UK after making the journey.

Peter Allen