Deadly shipwreck in the English Channel: what do we know about the victims? – LCI

This is the biggest tragedy at sea since the increase in 2018 of attempts to migrate across the Channel. Around 2 p.m. Wednesday, November 24, a fisherman said he had discovered about fifteen bodies floating in the water off Calais. A boat of migrants trying to reach England was wrecked, killing 27 people according to a provisional death toll. An investigation was opened by the Lille prosecutor’s office to find out the circumstances of the tragedy.

Among the victims are 17 men, seven women and three young people. A police source adds that there would be a teenager and 3 children among the deceased passengers. One of the women was pregnant. The precise nationality of each passenger is not known at the moment, but according to The voice of the North, these migrants were from “from the Middle-East”.

Among them, Maryam. Nicknamed “Baran”, the 24-year-old Kurdish woman was trying to join her fiancé who lives in the United Kingdom, reveals the BBC. Saccording to the account given by British public radio, she was exchanging with her companion via Snapchat when the boat would have started to deflate, forcing the passengers of the boat to try in vain to bail.

According to The world, associations and the Pas-de-Calais prefecture estimated that between 900 and 2000 exiles were present on the coast this summer, “mainly Eritreans, Sudanese, Afghans, Iranians and Syrians, among whom more and more women and children”. In an article published in early November, TV5 Monde also noted that nationals from Afghanistan and Iraq are also present in Calais.

However, two migrants survived the tragedy: an Iraqi and a Somali rescued, “in severe hypothermia” in waters at 17 ° C. According to the Lille prosecutor’s office, the vital prognosis of these survivors is “a priori not engaged”, indicates Le Figaro.

The boat, which would have left Dunkirk and set off on “this sea route which may seem short, but which turns out to be extremely perilous” as reported by Pierre Roques, coordinator of the L’Auberge des Migrants association, transported a total of 34 migrants.

According to the northern daily, the bodies of migrants recovered at sea were stored in a ship while waiting for them to be identified by the police, before being sent to the morgue.

This is the highest human toll recorded at sea since 2018, which has seen the number of migratory crossings soar, in the face of the growing lockdown of the port of Calais and Eurotunnel, used until then by migrants trying to reach the sea. ‘England. Before this sinking, the human toll was three dead and four missing in 2021, after six dead and three missing in 2020. Between January 1 and November 20, 31,500 migrants left the coast and 7,800 migrants were rescued. According to London, 25,700 migrants made the crossing over the first ten months of the year.

Crossing attempts continued overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, two rescue boats were mobilized and 110 people brought ashore, a close source told AFP.

For the time being, five people have been arrested, suspected of being smugglers in connection with the sinking of migrants, the last of which was in the night, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday.