A TER accidentally collided with four migrants in Calais, leaving one dead, one injured in “Absolute urgency” and two light injuries, we learned from the Boulogne-sur-mer prosecutor’s office, Thursday, November 4.
The accident took place around 6:35 p.m. on the railway line connecting Dunkirk to Calais, in the Dunkirk-Calais direction, the Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor told Agence France-Presse (AFP). , Guirec Le Bras.
The investigation has not at this stage made it possible to determine the age or identity of the deceased migrant and of the seriously injured, but “A priori”, the two slightly injured “Would be of Eritrean nationality”, he added. On Twitter, the Hauts-de-France vice-president in charge of transport, Franck Dhersin, wrote that the four victims are Eritreans.
According to the first elements communicated to the prosecution, “This railway line would be a (…) regular passage of migrants ”, who borrow it “To go to camps or elsewhere”. Seventeen passengers were in the TER but “No one was injured”, according to the prosecutor. The prosecution has opened an investigation for manslaughter.
SNCF announced for its part that traffic would remain interrupted on the TER Calais-Dunkirk axis until early morning Friday. SNCF teams were still present at the scene of the accident, in a residential area located not far from the hospital center, noted an AFP correspondent. This housing estate is also located near a migrant camp.
Multiplication of attempts
Over the past two days, off the North and Pas-de-Calais, attempts to cross the Channel by migrants on boats have multiplied. On Thursday morning, the body of one of them was found “In a 3.5-meter boat filled with water on a beach in Wissant”, told AFP a source close to the investigation. At his side, two people “In a state of severe hypothermia” were taken to hospital. Two other migrants, reported to maritime authorities as “Shipwrecked in the sea” in the same sector, were finally “Found during the day on the beach”, announced Thursday evening the maritime prefecture in a press release.
The day before, a migrant died, another was reported missing and 779 people were rescued at sea following the sinking of several makeshift boats in the Channel, according to the maritime prefecture.