LILLE, France: Several people died, including a young child, when an overcrowded boat attempted to cross the Channel to Britain, French authorities said on Saturday. Another would-be asylum seeker was injured and airlifted to hospital after the dinghy issued a call for assistance on Saturday morning. A French tow vessel, the Abeille Normandie, picked up 14 people on board, including the deceased during a rescue mission between 8 and 9 am, officials said.

“Yet again, several migrants lost their lives trying to reach Britain by crossing the Channel,” the Pas-de-Calais prefecture in northern France said. “A child was trampled to death,” France’s hard-line interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, said on X, adding that several other people had died in the “appalling drama”.

“The smugglers have the blood of these people on their hands and our government will intensify the fight against these gangs who enrich themselves by organizing these deadly crossings,” Retailleau added. French officials said the accident was not a shipwreck and the dead child had been found in the boat, not in the water. Olivier Barbarin, the mayor of the coastal town of Le Portel in northern France, said the child was around four years old.

The injured person was airlifted to hospital in Boulogne, northern France. The other passengers continued their journey. French authorities seek to stop people taking to the water but do not intervene once they are afloat except for rescue purposes, citing safety concerns. The Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor’s office confirmed the dead child had been “very young” but did not immediately release other details. Barbarin said the 14 passengers rescued had disembarked at the town’s commercial port. Channel crossings to Britain by undocumented asylum seekers have ballooned since 2018 despite repeated warnings about the perilous journey.

The Channel has heavy maritime traffic, icy waters and strong currents. The French and British governments have sought to stop the flow of undocumented migrants, who may pay smugglers thousands of euros per head for the passage to England from France aboard small boats.

France’s new right-wing prime minister, Michel Barnier, said on Tuesday the country needed a stricter immigration policy. He vowed to be “ruthless” with people traffickers, who he said “exploit misery and despair” that pushed undocumented asylum seekers to risk trying to cross the Channel and the Mediterranean. The latest tragedy comes after eight migrants died in mid-September when their overcrowded vessel capsized while trying to cross the Channel.

In early September at least 12 people including six minors, mostly from Eritrea, died off the northern French coast when their loaded boat capsized.

The number of migrants arriving in Britain by crossing the Channel in small boats has topped 25,000 since the start of the year. Stopping the small boat arrivals on England’s southern coast was a key issue in Britain’s general election in July. British Interior Minister Yvette Cooper has said the government aims over the next six months to achieve the highest rate of deportations of failed asylum seekers in five years. – AFP