Authorities in France have reported that on Sunday morning, about fifty people were helicopter-rescued.
According to the French authorities, two people have lost their lives while attempting to cross the Channel in a dinghy. This brings the total number of fatalities that have occurred since the middle of July to at least nine.
In a brief statement, the marine prefecture for the Channel in Calais confirmed the deaths and stated that Jacques Billant, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, was rushing to the location to supervise the rescue operations. The statement was sent in response to the news that the deaths had occurred.
Two people were pronounced dead, despite the fact that about fifty people were rescued by a helicopter and numerous ships that were dispatched to the area.
In the most recent incident that occurred before Sunday morning, which occurred on July 28th, a woman is suspected to have died of suffocation while she was in a dinghy.
Despite the fact that the circumstances surrounding the deaths that occurred on Sunday are not yet known, organisations such as Utopia 56, which provides assistance to people who are homeless or displaced in France, and Alarm Phone, which monitors the Channel and the Mediterranean and relays distress calls to the coastguard, have attributed the increase in deaths to the United Kingdom’s crackdown on small boats.
Over the last week, a spokeswoman for Alarm Phone shared the following statement: “We believe that at least 62 people have died at the UK border since March 2023, when the United Kingdom and France signed their most recent agreement to’stop the boats.'”
As a result of sea-crossing-related occurrences, 39 people lost their lives, and eight of those people were killed when they were crushed to death in the dinghy. Are the statistics within the range that the governments of the United Kingdom and France consider to be acceptable?
As a result of efforts made by the United Kingdom and other nations to disrupt the supply chain in the countries from which dinghies are obtained, the quantity of dinghies that are available has dropped. According to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), this has resulted in a greater number of individuals madly rushing to board the dinghies that are available. In order to render the boats worthless, the French police may occasionally use knives to slash them.
Daily numbers for small-boat The government publishes channel crossings. These figures include the total number of crossings as well as the number of boats that passed in each circumstance. Since 2018, the average number of people in each boat has increased from twenty to thirty to sixty to seventy. There have been recent reports of vessels that have been crowded with more than one hundred individuals.
In an effort to stop dinghies from leaving France, the United Kingdom is funding increased French policing on the beaches. In March 2023, a total of 478 million pounds was allocated for the purpose of establishing a new detention centre, providing 500 additional officers, and taking other measures to prevent individuals from boarding dinghies in order to cross the Channel.