Five migrants have died while attempting to cross the English Channel to reach the UK.
The tragedy occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning off the coast of France after around 70 people tried to get into a small boat launched from a beach, according to local media reports.
One other person is believed to have been injured during the incident in Wimereux, Pas-de-Calais.
French paper La Voix du Nord said 72 people, including 10 children, were rescued and taken to Calais while one person was taken to hospital in Boulogne.
The paper said the migrants got into difficulty while trying to board the boat in darkness and cold temperatures.
An intervention boat "which was on patrol in the area launched its boat to rescue the shipwrecked people" before the crew "identified inanimate and unconscious people to the water," a spokeswoman from the maritime prefecture told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
It comes as migrants crossed the English Channel for the first time in 2024 on Saturday.
A group of people believed to be migrants were brought ashore in Dover, Kent, yesterday morning.
They were seen arriving in a Border Force vessel.
Previously, there were 26 days of no crossings to the UK - the longest gap in small boat arrivals for five years.
Poor weather conditions potentially contributed to the lack of activity.
The provisional annual total for 2023 - 29,437 - is 36% lower than the record 45,774 crossings for the whole of 2022.
But it is still the second highest annual total on record, above the 2021 figure of 28,526.
