CALAIS: Six Afghan males died when a migrant boat heading to Britain sank in the Channel in the wee hours of Saturday, French officials said, as a search continued to find those still missing.

The deputy public prosecutor for the French coastal city of Boulogne, Philippe Sabatier, told AFP all six fatalities were Afghan men, believed to be in their 30s.

He added the rest of the passengers were “almost all Afghans with some Sudanese, mostly adults with some minors”.

Sabatier said 49 survivors were rescued — 36 by the French coastguard and 13 by their British counterparts.

British, French coastguard rescue 49 survivors

Between five and 10 passengers were still missing, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Three French ships, a helicopter and a plane were mobilised to search the area off Sangatte in northern France, along with two British ships.

“HM Coastguard is currently assisting the French authorities, Gris Nez, in a search and rescue response to an incident involving a small boat in the Channel,” a British interior ministry spokesperson said.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne likewise posted that her “thoughts go out to the victims” as she praised the efforts of the rescue teams.

A spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border “repression” for the tragedy, telling AFP that the difficulty of securing legal passage only “increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England”.

The boat capsized around 2am, off the northern coast of France, according to the prosecutor.

A reporter in Calais saw some of those rescued disembarking from a patrol boat with emergency services on site.

Over 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording the arrivals in 2018, official figures revealed.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2023