A man drowned after attempting to cross the Channel to the United Kingdom, and 30 others were rescued by French rescuers.
When the small migrant boat came into trouble near the French coast at Berck-sur-Mer, south of Boulogne, the man fell overboard.
Although the majority of individuals saved were on board the boat, five people were rescued from a sandbank.
The drowning on Friday is thought to be the English Channel’s first casualty in 2022. According to prosecutors, the individual who died on Friday was supposed to be in his 20s and of Sudanese descent.
The alarm was raised, according to local media, when someone on land noticed the boat getting into trouble in frigid temperatures, maybe because they were caught by the tide. According to officials, some of those rescued were suffering from hypothermia.
At least 27 people drowned in the Channel last November in the deadliest single migrant boat disaster since the waterway connecting northern France and the United Kingdom became a favourite migratory route.
A lifeboat crew recovered the man from the ocean unconscious after several boats and a chopper reacted to the warning on Friday.
The boat was hauled to land and abandoned on the quayside, according to France’s Channel and North Sea maritime authorities. According to the following aircraft search, there was no one else in the sea.
Last year, three times as many people crossed the English Channel in tiny boats as were expected in 2020.
According to BBC data, at least 28,431 people crossed the border in 2021. The number of people attempting to cross the Channel has increased this month, with 271 people reaching the Kent shore on Thursday alone, surpassing the total number in January 2020.
According to the local French news website, La Voix du Nord, authorities at Le Touquet stopped a crossing involving mostly Syrians, Afghans, and Iranians and captured two Syrian traffickers.
