A boat carrying 70 migrants on the English Channel sank in Pas-de-Calais on Tuesday, September 3. According to a report from the authorities, at least 12 people died. Two days after the tragedy, emotion is still running high among rescuers and survivors.
Twelve people died in an attempt to cross the English Channel on Tuesday, September 3, off Cap Gris-Nez, in Pas-de-Calais. A new shipwreck that carries the heaviest human toll this year.
In the city of Calais, around ten people gathered to pay tribute to those who died in the waters of the English Channel on Tuesday. On the ground, a list of the identities of the migrants who died during a crossing to the United Kingdom was laid.
“I saw my sister in the water”
Holding a candle, Biname Semay, a survivor of the shipwreck, knows he could have been among the victims. “I was with them in the middle of the sea and I experienced this horrible scene,” he explains, wearing a black hood over his head.
“In four or five minutes, the boat was completely destroyed and sank. All the people were fighting to survive and we lost a lot of people,” he said.
At the time of the attempted crossing, the survivor was standing next to his sister, an 18-year-old girl, “beautiful on the outside and in her heart” who had “the future ahead of her”. “She was right next to me, I held her hand and then the rescue boat arrived. When they rescued me, I saw my sister in the water and she was already dead,” says the Eritrean, still in shock.
Around Biname, the emotion is palpable among the people who have come to pay tribute to the 12 victims. Amanuel, another Eritrean castaway, tells AFP that he was one of the last to be rescued. “There were a lot of girls and young boys, I saw them die.” Wearing a blue sweatshirt and staring into the distance, he relives the long minutes hanging on to the boat, struggling to hold on, while other people held on to him.
“We are angry, we are upset, especially because for us these deaths could have been avoided,” says Feyrouz Lajili, project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders. She denounces the reinforcement of police checks, which push migrants to take more risks.
34 people died crossing the Channel
At the same time as this tribute, the Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, was in Boulogne-sur-Mer to greet the crew of the “Murex”, the first boat to arrive at the scene of the shipwreck.
“We first collected the debris, the life jackets, the cans of gasoline and the personal effects of the castaways. Then we came across a body, then two, then three,” said Axel Baheu, manager of the boat.
One scene that particularly struck him was when he was pulling up the body of a woman with a phone around her neck. “When we put her on the deck to try to see if she was breathing, it kept ringing. That’s when it was the hardest. I realized that no one would ever answer again,” he told Le Parisien.
For sea rescuers, this new tragedy has caused exasperation. “Unfortunately, we are used to finding bodies at sea, but not this many. It is a shock, this number is disastrous and cruel,” says Gérard Barron, president of the SNSM of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Since the beginning of January, 34 people have died crossing the Channel. 2024 is already the deadliest year.
Jeremy Mahieux with Sylvain Allemand
