50 migrants rescued from a second dinghy in the Channel on the same night four died making the crossing
16 December 2022, 19:04
Officials rescued a second small boat carrying 50 migrants across the English Channel on the same night that four people died when their dinghy capsized into the icy water, it has been revealed.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Border Force officers picked up the desperate migrants, five of whom had fallen into the Channel themselves, after their boat had begun to sink while making the crossing in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the government said.
It came after four people are understood died and 43 were rescued from a separate boat after the UK coastguard, the French Navy and an air ambulance raced to the site in the middle of the Channel.
The search was called off on Thursday afternoon, 36 hours later, with four people still thought to be missing.
One of the people confirmed to have died was a teenager, and twelve of the migrants who survived were children, who have now been placed into care.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has launched an investigation after some of the migrants said they had paid £5,000 to people smugglers to make the dangerous crossing.
NCA director-general Graeme Biggar said: 'This incident, tragically, highlights the dangers of these crossings, a high percentage of which are facilitated by organised criminal networks.
"They treat people as a commodity to be profited from and think nothing of putting them in incredibly dangerous situations.
"Working with our partners on both sides of the Channel we are determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice.'
Some 45,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year in small boats, paying people smugglers thousands of pounds to ferry them across from France in perilous conditions.
One of the boats that went to rescue migrants early on Wednesday morning was a scallop trawler whose crew found themselves surrounded by scores of struggling migrants.
A fisherman colleague of the hero skipper who came to their rescue told LBC that the problem is "prolific".
Ben Squire told Nick Ferrari that he wasn't on the boat but his team were first at the scene, explaining: “I was awoken at 4’o’clock in the morning, took a couple of deep breaths, it’s never a phone call like that to see how I’m doing...
“The fishermen who work in that part of the channel are in the thick of it. We’ve been involved in an incident before, that was last summer, it’s prolific.”
The captain himself described the scenes as "like something out of a second world war movie.""There were people in the water everywhere, screaming," he added.
Migrants pulled onto ship as dinghy sinks in the Channel
Meanwhile head of lifeboats at the RNLI Simon Ling told LBC: "The whole situation and complexity around migration draws different opinion from all quarters but, for the RNLI, it’s relatively simple.
"The RNLI is a charity that exists to save lives at sea and our role in this crisis is to respond to the pager when we're tasked by His Majesty’s coastguard.
"This is about men and women, brothers and sisters, all at this lifeboat station who went out to save fellow men, women, brothers and sisters.
"So for us we just concentrate on what we've been doing for 198 years and that’s to save lives at sea.
He added: "Saving lives at sea is an incredible human endeavour and one that we’re very proud of."
