around a hundred migrants rescued during several crossing attempts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 04:28 PM

Around a hundred migrants were rescued overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday while trying to cross the Channel to reach England, announced the Channel and North Sea maritime prefecture (Premar). Despite the winter weather, “many departures of migrant boats” were reported during the night and 99 of them were rescued in two separate operations, Premar said in a press release. During the first, an intervention and assistance tugboat recovered all the passengers from a boat, i.e. 58 people.

The exile aid association Utopia 56 had reported a few hours earlier to the regional rescue center that several people from this boat had fallen into the water but the tugboat did not see anyone at sea in this area, reports the Premar. The tug then monitored the boat until its passengers requested assistance, then brought them back to land in Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais).

At the same time, a rescue ship chartered by the State monitored another precarious boat leaving from Malo-les-Bains, near Dunkirk (North). After several hours, some of the people on board the boat requested assistance and the ship picked up 41 passengers on board while the others continued on their way to England.

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Back into the dunes

The crossing attempts continued in broad daylight, thanks to very calm seas. Around 3 p.m., around fifty exiles tried, under the eyes of walkers, to take to the sea from Sangatte beach (Pas-de-Calais), noted an AFP journalist. The pilot failed to start the engine of the overloaded boat, which drifted for many minutes to a breakwater. The canoe and its occupants, including a child of around ten years old, finally ran aground on the beach where they were helped by police officers, who then let them go back into the dunes.

According to the results of the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, 77 migrants died in 2024 while trying to reach England aboard «small boats »a record. On Saturday, a 19-year-old Syrian boy died during an attempt to leave, “probably crushed” by other migrants in the crowd of departure, according to the prefecture.