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Pictures have emerged of the flimsy rubber boat that sunk off the coast of France, leading to the death of eight migrants.
The eight people died overnight while attempting to cross the Channel. An additional six migrants are in hospital, including a 10-month-old baby, authorities have said.
Rescue services were called to waters in the commune of Ambleteuse around 1am local time. The rubber vessel had around 50 people on board and started to sink not long after leaving the coast.
On Sunday morning, the wreckage of a vessel thought to be the boat was pictured on the coastline.
Jacques Billant, the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, said that rescue crews were alerted that a boat with 59 people on board was in difficulty in waters off the coast of Ambleteuse.
“A new drama took place around one in the morning and we deplore the death of eight people,” he told a news conference, adding that the other 51 on board were now in the care of rescue and medical crews.
Six people were taken to hospital “in relative emergency,” including a 10-month-old baby with hypothermia, he said.
The dead were men from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Iran and Afghanistan, Mr Billant added.
French maritime authorities said that 200 people were rescued in a 24-hour period over Friday and Saturday.
Responding to the deaths, foreign secretary David Lammy said: “It’s awful. It’s a further loss of life.”
He told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme he had been to the National Crime Agency and seen the “awful sort of rubber dinghies that people are coming across the Channel with, many of them, of course, not able to make it in these contraptions”.
The government has been “discussing how we go after those gangs, in cooperation upstream with other European partners”.
Sir Keir Starmer will be in Italy on Monday for talks with counterpart Giorgia Meloni about her efforts to tackle the problem “and the work they have done, particularly, with Albania”.
The prime minister has said he is interested in the rollout of the policy, under which Tirana will accept asylum seekers on Italy’s behalf while their claims are processed.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said: “This is yet another appalling and avoidable tragedy and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who’ve died.
“These perilous crossings are seemingly becoming more and more dangerous, suggesting smugglers are taking greater chances with people’s lives as they try to evade detection efforts by the UK and French authorities.
“The government’s ‘smash the gangs’ slogan and its security-heavy approach is contributing to the death toll because the refusal to establish safe asylum routes means these flimsy vessels controlled by people smugglers are the only real option for desperate people fleeing persecution.
“Until UK ministers and their counterparts in France start sharing responsibility over the need for safe routes, we should expect this weekend’s tragedy to keep repeating itself time and time again.”
The incident comes more than a week after the deadliest attempted Channel crossing this year, when six children and a pregnant woman were among at least 12 migrants who died when their boat was “ripped open”.
More than 53 survivors were plucked from waters off Gris-Nez point, between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer, during a major air and sea rescue operation on 3 September.
More than 30 people have died in Channel crossings this year.
The Labour government has vowed to “smash” the people-smuggling gangs behind the crossings, in part through increased cooperation with other European nations.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper moved to establish a new Border Security Command in her first days in office, while in August, Sir Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron pledged to work together more closely to dismantle migrant smuggling routes.
Some 22,440 people have crossed the Channel so far this year, with nearly 9,000 having made the crossing since the general election.
