Crossings, possibly pushed by relatively mild weather conditions, and rescue operations multiply in recent days off North and Pas-de-Calais.
Le Monde
A migrant is dead, another has been missing and more than 400 were rescued at sea Wednesday, November 3rd, after the sinking of several fortune boats in the Channel, learned the France-Presse agency (AFP) with the Dunkirk Procuratorate and the Maritime Prefecture.
From “many” rescue operations were carried out in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais, beginner in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday and continuing “until the evening” Wednesday, reports in a statement the maritime prefecture Channel and North Sea (Premar). “More than 400 people have been recovered. (…) Unfortunately, despite the means implemented, a person is missing and another has been declared deceased,” writes the premar.
an investigation open for “unintentional homicide”
“a person was announced to me today as part of the sinking of a” Small Boat “, who would have had damage, and who would have been shipwrecked, particularly because of the overload,” said Earlier in AFP the Prosecutor of the Republic of Dunkirk, Sébastienis. The dead person “is a priori an adult, we talk about someone thirty years”, and his boat carried “about forty people” according to the first elements of the investigation, “to still be verified”, said Mr. Pilly.
The parquet opened an investigation for “unintentional homicide”, entrusted to the police at the borders (PAF).
The other shipwrecks traveling with him “were recovered by the SNSM [National Rescue Society at Sea] and brought back to the ground, in Loon Beach,” said Mr. Pilly.
According to the premar, this sinking “has been recovered unconscious. The rescuers have done the maximum possible”, but it was “declared died once back to quay”. During another rescue operation, “the recovered shipwrecks indicated to the rescuers that a person had fallen to the sea off the Pas-de-Calais,” continues the maritime prefecture. But the research undertaken did not allow it to find it and have been suspended at the end of the morning “for lack of new elements”.
Multiplication of rescue operations
Rescue operations multiply in recent days off North and Pas-de-Calais. On Wednesday, they required the intervention of several national navy vessels, stars of the Maritime Gendarmerie, various units of the SNSM or two helicopters of the French and Belgian armies.
“This week ago a strong activity”, possibly pushed by “relatively mild weather conditions”, observed the prosecutor of Dunkirk.
In the night from Monday to Tuesday, 292 migrants had been recovered at sea in seven separate operations.
According to the Maritime Prefect Philip DuTrieux, some 15,400 migrants tried the crossing between the January 1 and August 31, of whom 3,500 were “recovered in difficulty” in the Strait and brought back on the French coasts. In 2020, crossings and attempts of crossings concerned some 9,500 people, compared to 2,300 in 2019 and 600 in 2018.