LILLE: A Kuwaiti migrant in his 60s died on Saturday while seeking to cross the Channel from northern France to England aboard a small boat, regional authorities said. The man died after suffering a cardiac arrest on the boat that was carrying him and fellow migrants across the Channel, the prefecture for the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France told AFP.

The boat returned to the beach and the man was taken off but was declared dead at the scene despite intervention from police and medics, it added. The prefecture said the man was of Kuwaiti nationality and aged around 60. But there was no further information on his identity or why he had chosen to travel clandestinely to the UK.

He is the sixth person to lose their life this year trying to cross the Channel in this manner. "This boat set off again once it had dropped off the people who wanted to disembark on the beach," said the French maritime prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea, adding that the boat was "quite heavily loaded", without giving a precise figure on the number of people on board.

According to the French authorities, 78 migrants died in 2024 while trying to reach England aboard small boats, a record since the start of the trend in this area in 2018. The British and French governments are seeking to stop the crossings by intensifying patrols on France's beaches, intercepting inflatable boats destined for the crossings and apprehending the smugglers who are paid thousands of euros by every migrant aboard for the dangerous passage.

On February 27, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper met with her French counterpart, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to agree new measures to tackle people-smuggling gangs, including establishing a new intelligence unit and training drone pilots to help intercept boats before they reach the sea. French authorities will only stop migrants on land but never once they take to sea.

But rights groups in France argue that the new measures are simply increasing the peril for migrants by forcing them into increasingly packed boats and choosing crossing points to the west where the Channel is lengthier. According to the UK authorities, 823 migrants arrived on 15 small boats in the week ending March 2. This week has also seen an intense flow as the weather improves, with 326 migrants aboard six boats arriving on March 4 alone. - AFP