Around 27 people drowned when their boat capsized on attempting to cross the English Channel off the coast of France near Calais, Wednesday.
The death toll, which was revised from 31 to 27 people, includes 17 men, seven women – one of whom was pregnant – and three children said France’s interior minister Gerald Darmanin. Five people have been arrested in connection with the fatal crossing, which is the worst single loss of life in the Channel since the International Organization for Migration’s records began in 2014.
Mr Darmanin said regional prosecutors had launched an investigation into aggravated manslaughter. He said two survivors were in a critical condition in a French hospital, where they are being treated for severe hypothermia. One is Iraqi and the other Somalian, he told RTL radio.
Of note, more people have made the dangerous journey across the English Channel, a day after 27 people drowned in the deadliest crossing on record.
A group wearing life jackets was seen clustered together onboard a lifeboat near Dover on Thursday morning.
The alarm was raised on Wednesday after a fishing boat crew spotted several people in the sea off the coast of France.
Speaking at the House of Commons on Thursday, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said channel crossings were unnecessary”, “illegal” and “desperately unsafe”, adding that “there is no simple solution” and settlement schemes that have existed previously “are not the answer”.
Home Secretary Priti Patel told MPs she had spoken to her French counterpart and offered to put more officers on the ground and continued to push for joint patrols of the Channel.
She said Wednesday’s incident was a dreadful shock but not a surprise, adding: “It is also a reminder of how vulnerable people are put at peril when in the hands of criminal gangs.”
Downing Street said the scenes of people continuing to arrive in boats on England’s south coast showed the need to crack down on traffickers.
“It illustrates that we absolutely need to step up our work with our French counterparts to dismantle this horrific trade which preys on vulnerable people,” the prime minister’s official spokesperson said.
Earlier, immigration minister Kevin Foster said the UK was determined to smash the “evil” business model of people traffickers.
Mr Foster said ruthless criminals were sending people into the Channel’s dangerous waters on flimsy boats without proper equipment.
“Those who organised that boat yesterday would have just viewed these people… who passed away, as just a profit-making opportunity,” he told BBC Breakfast.
Despite yesterday’s deaths in the Channel, the crossings continued this morning. Around 40 migrants have been brought to Dover by the lifeboat charity the RNLI.
Amid rough stormy winds and freezing weather, the will is strong to get to the UK; but no more boats have been making the crossing this afternoon due to powerful winds.
The task is now started to establish the identities of the people who died. That may prove difficult, as many migrants take to the water without any paperwork.
Another key concern is why their boat sank – was it overloaded, was the sea too rough, or could it have been hit by a passing ship?
The French authorities have described the boat as very flimsy.
Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that while the UK and France had agreed more needed to be done, there had been “difficulties” persuading the French “to do things in a way that we think the situation deserves”.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron told Mr Johnson “he was expecting the British to co-operate fully [and] abstain from instrumentalizing a tragic situation for political purposes”.
Since the start of the year, 1,552 smugglers have been arrested in northern France and 44 smuggler networks dismantled, Mr Macron said.
Despite this, he said 47,000 endeavored Channel crossings to the UK took place this year and 7,800 migrants were rescued.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the UK should be working with the French authorities in the makeshift camps, where the power of the people smugglers was “far greater” than that of the authorities.
He told the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast he was “sick of the home secretary playing to the headlines on this with grand statements about what she’s going to do… but actually not achieving anything”.
The UK has pledged to pay France €62.7m (£54m) during 2021-22 to help secure the borders.
It comes as asylum claims made in the UK have risen to the highest level in nearly 20 years, with 37,562 applications in the year to September.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby called for a better system based on “compassion, justice, and co-operation across frontiers”.
The Dover Strait is the busiest shipping lane in the world and has claimed many lives of people trying to cross in inflatable dinghies.
Record numbers of migrants are making the crossing from France to the UK and it is thought at least 10 other people had died in the past few weeks while attempting to cross.
The International Organization for Migration – which is linked to the United Nations – said Wednesday’s disaster was the worst single loss of life in the Channel since it began collecting data in 2014.
Human rights groups in the UK have blamed the government led by Boris Johnson for inculcating migration management that forces people to take immense risks in traveling through the sea in small boats or other hazardous means.
Commenting on reports about Johnson expressing regret for the refugee deaths, director of War on Want, Asad Rehman, on Wednesday called his words “crocodile tears” and blamed the UK government’s “politics of walls and fences” for the tragic deaths in the English Channel and the Mediterranean.