PARIS – A small vessel carrying migrants attempting to cross the English Channel ran aground on the northern coast of France, resulting in two fatalities and injuries to 16 others, three of whom suffered serious burns, authorities reported on Sunday.
The director general of the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, Christophe Marx, informed reporters that the boat, carrying 82 individuals, departed from Haldereau, situated a few kilometers south of Boulogne-sur-Mer. It experienced engine failure overnight and began to drift.
While a French military police boat managed to rescue 17 people and transport them to Boulogne-sur-Mer, 65 were still aboard the stricken vessel when it ran aground.
Marx indicated that the two deceased women, thought to be in their twenties and of Sudanese origin, likely died from asphyxiation. He noted that their deaths were possibly due to being “squashed or suffocated,” a tragic occurrence in overcrowded boats.
The ongoing investigation reports that three of the injured are in serious condition, suffering burns from fuel at the boat’s bottom.
This incident marks the third tragedy involving migrants in the Channel in just over a month.
Previously, two men and two women lost their lives attempting to board a rubber dinghy off the northern French coast. A Sudanese man has been arrested by British authorities on charges of endangering life. Just a week earlier, two other individuals died under similar circumstances near Calais.
Recently, British and French governments enacted a multi-million euro agreement aimed at curbing migrant crossings, which includes bolstered police patrols and surveillance in northern France.
To date, more than 6,000 migrants have successfully made the Channel crossing to the UK this year, a decrease of 36% compared to last year’s figures, although shifting weather patterns may have influenced this decline.
Migrant aid organization Utopia56 reported that before the recent tragedies, at least 172 people had perished along the France-UK border in the last three years, with 123 of those deaths occurring at sea.
