At least 12 people, including what appeared to be six minors, died after a flimsy, overcrowded boat suddenly capsized off the coast of northern France on Tuesday during an attempt to cross the English Channel, the French authorities said.
It was the deadliest episode in the waterway this year as the French and British governments struggle to prevent migrants from attempting the perilous crossing.
Crammed by smugglers onto a boat that was less than 25 feet long, more than 60 people fell into the water after their “extremely fragile” vessel started sinking, according to Gérald Darmanin, France’s interior minister. Almost none of them had life vests, he said.
“This is a tragedy that affects us all,” Mr. Darmanin told reporters at a news conference in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a city in the coastal Pas-de-Calais area, which is where the sinking occurred and which at some points is less than 30 miles from the British coastline.
The vessel sank about three miles off the coast, French authorities said. Twelve people were hospitalized, two of them in critical condition, they added.
Jacques Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, told reporters that the boat “rapidly and brutally” broke apart shortly after 11 a.m. as it headed toward Britain.
Guirec Le Bras, the prosecutor in Boulogne-sur-Mer, told reporters it was not immediately clear what had caused the boat to sink or how the victims had died. But he said his office had opened an investigation into a range of potential criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter. Investigators had not yet determined the exact nationalities and ages of the people on board, he said, but most of them appeared to be from Eritrea and it seemed that most of the victims were women or children.
The French maritime authorities said in a statement that rescue operations involving helicopters, fishing boats and French Navy ships were quickly set in motion and that rescue workers picked up 65 people out of the water.
One of the worst migrant-related accidents in the Channel happened in 2021, when 27 people died after their boat capsized, but deadly tragedies have repeatedly occurred on a smaller scale.
Many of the most recent incidents have unfolded near Boulogne-sur-Mer, an area that has become more attractive for smuggling networks after French authorities tightened patrols and security farther north on the coastline, Mr. Darmanin said.
Nearly 36,000 people trying to reach Britain were the subject of search-and-rescue operations in the English Channel in 2023, according to a report by the French maritime authorities, down from over 51,000 in 2022.
But the average number of people per boat grew to 50 from 30 — making a perilous crossing even more so, according to the report. Last year, 12 people attempting the crossing died in France’s search-and-rescue zone, the report said.
The Channel is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Its waters are especially icy in the winter, winds can be treacherous, and migrants trying to cross often crowd onto flimsy inflatable boats.
Both France and Britain blame human smuggling networks for putting the lives of migrants at risk.
“The gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives have been cramming more and more people onto increasingly unseaworthy dinghies, and sending them out into the Channel even in very poor weather,” Yvette Cooper, Britain’s home secretary, whose office oversees immigration into the country, said on Tuesday. “They do not care about anything but the profits they make.”
The British and French authorities agreed last year that Britain would pay France 541 million pounds, currently more than $700 million, over three years to help pay for drones, a new detention center and hundreds of additional police officers to patrol beaches in northern France — one of several deals that the two countries have struck over the past few years to try to reduce the number of crossings.
But the Channel crossings have become a recurring sticking point in relations between the two countries, and on Tuesday, Mr. Darmanin said that only a new “migration treaty” to harmonize asylum and deportation rules between Britain and the European Union would provide a lasting solution.
Less than 5 percent of migrants from Africa or the Middle East who cluster in makeshift camps on the coast end up requesting asylum in France, he said.
Many prefer risking the trip across the Channel over staying in France because they see Britain as an attractive destination with a strong job market where English is spoken, or because they already have family there or people they know from their home country.
“Nothing can resist that desire to continue to live with your family, to find a job, and live correctly,” Mr. Darmanin said.
At least 19,294 people have arrived in England across the Channel on small boats since the start of 2024, according to British government data, comparable to the number of arrivals in the first eight months of the previous year.
The arrival of the small boats across the Channel have become a major point of political tension in Britain after the former Conservative government vowed to “stop the boats” and introduced a contentious plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in an attempt to dissuade migrants from attempting the crossing.
The Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain announced after a landslide victory in July that it would scrap those plans. Since then, though, the issue of immigration has taken center stage, with far-right riots rattling cities across Britain this summer.
Though the number of boat arrivals has risen significantly since 2018, they make up just a fraction of immigration into Britain overall, and the majority of people making this crossing are asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution.
Some 93 percent of the people who arrived in small boats between 2018 and March 2024 claimed asylum, and of those who had received a decision by March 31, around three-quarters were successful, according to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, a British charity that supports asylum seekers and refugees, said in a statement on Tuesday that “the number of deaths in the Channel this year has been shockingly high.”
But “enforcement alone is not the solution,” Mr. Solomon said. “Heightened security and policing measures on the French coast have led to increasingly perilous crossings, launching from more dangerous locations and in flimsy, overcrowded vessels.”
He added that the British government needed to take action against the criminal gangs that are often responsible for smuggling people across the Channel, but that it also “must develop a plan to improve and expand safe routes for those seeking safety.”
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