Twelve migrants perish attempting to cross Channel to UK

At least 12 migrants died off the northern French coast on Tuesday trying to cross the Channel to England in the deadliest such disaster this year, the French government said after a major rescue operation.

Announcing the death toll on X, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin also said that two migrants were still missing.

Several were injured after their boat carrying dozens ran into trouble off Wimereux, a town some five kilometers (three miles) from Boulogne-sur-Mer on the French coast.

A source close to the investigation said the dead included three minors.

According to the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor, Guirec Le Bras, the migrants who died were mostly from Eritrea. Ten of them were female and two male, he said. Half the total were minors.

The crew on a French government-operated ship, the Minck, were the first to become aware of the emergency and to respond, naval officer Etienne Baggio told AFP.

French navy helicopters, fishing boats, and military vessels were mobilized for the operation, he said.

It was the deadliest such disaster this year which has already seen 25 people die in migrant crossings, up from 12 in 2023.

The French and British governments have for years sought to stop the flow of migrants, who pay smugglers thousands of euros per head for the passage to England from France aboard small boats.

UK interior minister Yvette Cooper called the deaths on Tuesday "horrifying and deeply tragic".

She criticized the "gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives", adding they "do not care about anything but the profits they make".

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron had earlier this summer pledged to strengthen "cooperation" in handling the surge in undocumented migrant numbers.

  'Ever increasing risks'  

But on Monday alone, 351 migrants crossed in small boats, with 21,615 making the journey this year, according to UK government statistics.

The crossing often proves perilous, and in November 2021, 27 migrants died when their boat capsized in the deadliest single such disaster to date.

French authorities seek to stop migrants taking to the water but do not intervene once they are afloat except for rescue purposes, citing safety concerns.

Darmanin, who rushed to the site of the tragedy Tuesday, told reporters that the EU and Britain needed to negotiate a new treaty on migration.

The European Union should seek to "re-establish a traditional migration relationship with our British friends and neighbours", he said, adding that British payments to France to prevent irregular migration covered only "a third of what we are spending".

The numbers of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats from France to England have been a major bone of contention in post-Brexit relations between Paris and London.

Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak, under pressure to reduce the numbers crossing, forged a deal with Macron in March of last year increasing British payments to fund more French police along the coast.

Under the deal, London agreed to step up funding to France to total 541 million euros ($575 million).

But Darmanin said Tuesday that "the tens of millions of euros that we negotiate every year with our British friends" were not sufficient to stem the flow of migrants, many of whom he said wanted to reach Britain to reunite with families or "to work in conditions that would not be acceptable in France".

Starmer has cancelled a plan by Britain's former Conservative government to send irregular migrants to a holding camp in Rwanda.

The British government is now planning "a major surge" in returns of irregular migrants to countries including Iraq, an official said Thursday, as it tries to clear an asylum backlog.

Meanwhile, both governments are seeking to break the business models of the people-smuggling gangs who organise the crossings and are paid thousands of euros by each migrant for the risky trip.

But Steve Smith, head of the Care4Calais charity, said investment in security measures was "not reducing crossings".

"It is simply pushing people to take ever increasing risks to do so," he said. "It's time they ended these tragedies and introduced safe routes."