A young migrant died this Friday following an attempt to cross the Channel with around thirty other exiles who were rescued off Berck (Pas-de-Calais), announced the Boulogne-sur prosecutor’s office. -Wed.
The victim, in her twenties, is a priori of Sudanese nationality, said the prosecution, which opened an investigation against X for manslaughter.
This is the first migrant death in the English Channel this year.
According to the local authorities, 30 people died and 4 disappeared, including 27 migrants who died on November 24 when their boat sank off the coast of Calais, the worst tragedy to have occurred on this migratory route.
In “a semi-rigid canoe”
According to the prosecution, 32 people who attempted the crossing on Friday with the victim were rescued “safe and sound”, but in a state of “hypothermia”.
According to a source close to the investigation, the migrants were on “a semi-rigid canoe”. They may have been trapped by the tide, with some of them found on sandbanks.
Crossings of the Channel from France to England in small boats reached a record number in 2021, at more than 28,000 people, according to the British press agency PA.
The phenomenon, which has developed strongly since 2018 in the face of the closure of the port of Calais and the Eurotunnel, which migrants borrowed while hiding in vehicles, poisons relations between London and Paris.
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