A migrant died and another was seriously injured off the coast of Gravelines (northern France) on Thursday night after the boat on which they were trying to cross the English Channel with around sixty other people sank, the French maritime prefecture said on Friday with .
A total of 66 people were rescued, including these two victims who were found “unconscious.”
One of them, “with a life-threatening condition, was evacuated by helicopter to the Calais hospital” (North) and the second “unfortunately could not be resuscitated,” the prefecture said in a press release.
In the middle of the night, the Regional Operational Center for Maritime Surveillance and Rescue (Cross) was notified “that a migrant boat” was in trouble “less than eight kilometers from the coast off Grand Fort,” near Gravelines, carrying about sixty people on board, she said.
The Cross then hired a rescue ship to rescue the castaways, arriving in the area “at 12:30 a.m.,” she continued. As they approached the boat, the crew informed the Cross that one of the boat's hoses had “gone empty” and that there were people “in the water.”
All of the rescued castaways were “disembarked and cared for in the port of Calais.”
The search in the area will continue by air and sea, the prefecture said.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is expected in Calais on Friday morning, where he will meet police and gendarmes involved in the fight against irregular immigration.
Since the 1990s and after the closure of a Red Cross center in Sangatte (Pas-de-Calais) in 2002, hundreds of exiles crowded into tents and makeshift shelters in Calais or Dunkirk to reach England hidden in trucks or by boat.
About 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats to reach England since the start of the year, compared with 44,000 on the same day last year, the northern prefecture said on December 4.