The body of a Yemeni man aged around twenty was discovered Wednesday morning on the beach of Sangatte (Pas-de-Calais), opposite England, from where illegal boats regularly depart to cross the Channel in very precarious conditions.
The body was on the sand, not far from the water, surrounded by around ten police officers, an AFP photographer noted on site.
“It is a young man in his twenties of Yemeni nationality”, discovered by CRS, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture told AFP.
Bodies have been found washed up repeatedly in recent months on the department's beaches after shipwrecks or chaotic departures towards Great Britain.
After a record year for the number of deaths in the Channel, illegal crossings continue in the middle of winter, with temperatures sometimes freezing.
Fifty-nine migrants on board a boat in difficulty were rescued on Tuesday in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais, the Channel and North Sea maritime prefecture announced in a press release on Wednesday.
French rescue resources had already taken care of 84 people at sea in the same area on Monday, and 99 people last Wednesday.
-Several passengers on board one of the boats rescued last Wednesday fell into the water, the migrant aid association Utopia 56 immediately reported. But once arrived in the area, the French rescue boat had not “Noted any person at sea,” the maritime prefecture said last week.
According to the report from the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, at least 77 migrants died in 2024 while trying to reach England aboard small boats, a record since the start of this type of crossing in 2018.
On January 11, a young 19-year-old Syrian died during an attempted crossing, “probably crushed” by other migrants in the rush of departure, according to the prefecture.
published on January 22 at 4:27 p.m., AFP
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