Five migrants died during the night from Saturday to Sunday near a beach in Wimereux, in Pas-de-Calais, while they tried to join a boat at sea in freezing water to cross the Channel, the first deadly drama of 2024 off the coast of France. Four deaths were initially counted by the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea (Prémar) at the start of the morning, but a fifth inanimate body was then found at the edge of the beach. A sixth person was also transferred “in absolute emergency” to the Boulogne-sur-Mer hospital (Pas-de-Calais), indicates Prémar in a press release, also reporting one lightly injured and 32 survivors. .
“The people found themselves in difficulty at sea to reach” a boat already in the water, reported by the police on land, around 1:45 a.m., she detailed. The intervention tugboat Abeille Normandie, “on patrol in the area, launched its boat” to rescue them. “At that moment”, the crew “identified inanimate and unconscious people”, in water at 9 degrees, continued Prémar. The survivors were taken to a hangar in Calais made available to migrants as part of the extreme cold plan, noted an AFP journalist.
“Heartbreaking” news
“Entire families with children, some of them young” are among them, according to one of the people responsible for their reception, who does not wish to give his name. “Other surveillance and rescue operations are underway along the entire Pas-de-Calais coastline,” Prémar said.
An investigation was opened and entrusted to the Oltim (Office for the fight against illicit trafficking of migrants) of Coquelles and to the maritime gendarmerie of Calais, in particular for “aggravated involuntary homicides”, “helping the stay of foreigners in an irregular situation organized gang” and “criminal association”, the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Migrants are being interviewed “as witnesses” and autopsies must take place to determine the cause of deaths which may be due to “drownings” or “thermal shock”, he added. The head of British diplomacy David Cameron told the BBC that this “heartbreaking” news “breaks his heart”. But it “also shows the extent to which we must stop the boats, stop this trafficking and the human beings behind it,” he added. “In an ideal world, we would just send these people back to France, and the traffic would collapse. But that is not possible, and that is why we are pursuing this policy with Rwanda,” he said. for follow-up.
“Despicable traffic”
British MPs are due to vote this week on the bill allowing the government to deport migrants who arrived illegally on British soil to Rwanda. “We have lost control of our borders and we have to do something to stop the boats. Now I think the starting point for this is to tackle the criminal gangs who carry out this vile traffic”, reacted for his says Keir Starmer, leader of the Labor opposition on the BBC.
On the Wimereux dike, the scene of the tragedy, only a few clothes and shoes left by the shipwrecked victims remained on Sunday, under a gray sky and drizzle, noted an AFP journalist. Twelve migrants lost their lives in 2023 while trying to cross the Channel, according to the Prémar count.
Since the 1990s, hundreds of exiles have crowded into tents and makeshift shelters in Calais or Dunkirk to try to reach England, hidden in trucks or by boat. In 2023, nearly 30,000 migrants reached the English coast illegally, compared to more than 45,000 in 2022, a record year, according to the British Interior Ministry. About a fifth are from Afghanistan. Next come the Iranians, Turks, Eritreans and Iraqis.