One person dead and 15 rescued crossing Channel in overloaded boat carrying close to 100 people
French authorities rescue people from the water after small boat overloaded with close to 100 migrants
One person has died and 15 people rescued while trying to cross the English Channel overnight in an overloaded small boat – marking the second such fatality as many days.
French authorities said the boat initially set off close to the port of Dunkirk at 11:30pm on Wednesday, with around 40 people on board.
But more than three hours later, at around 3:30am, the same boat then picked up a further group of people on the Gravelines coast, which lies some 12 miles to the west of Dunkirk and 35 miles from the port of Dover.
Three people were rescued from the water and a group of 12 others on board the dinghy asked to be evacuated, the French coastguard said.
One person rescued was unconscious and was declared dead despite medical treatment, after being airlifted by a Navy helicopter onto the state-chartered vessel which had been monitoring the dinghy throughout its journey.
The 14 others rescued were taken back to the French shoreline on a patrol boat, where they received medical treatment. An investigation has been opened by the Dunkirk public prosecutor’s office.
French authorities said in their statement on Thursday morning that they were still monitoring the dinghy as it continued to travel towards the UK, with around 80 people still on board.
It was one of several boats reported to have set off from the French coastline overnight on Wednesday, authorities said. The previous day, five boats arrived in Britain carrying a total of 289 people, after more than a week of zero crossings.
Two people were pulled from the water on Wednesday after reports that a group of people tried to board a dinghy and got into difficulty in the Equihen-Plage area shortly after 9am.
One was suffering from hypothermia while the other was in cardiac arrest and did not survive, authorities said.
At least eight people have now died in 2025 while trying to make the perilous journey across the Channel – one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, traversed by more than 600 commercial vessels every day.
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration estimates that at least 78 people died in 2024, making it the deadliest year on record. At least 225 migrants have lost their lives since such crossings first began to be detected in 2018, after increasingly stringent security measures at ports and the Eurotunnel succeeded in preventing stowaways on lorries and trains bound for the UK.
The small dinghies which cross the strait are frequently dangerously packed with far more people than is safe to carry, with a father describing to the BBC last May how his seven-year-old daughter was fatally crushed aboard a boat carrying 110 people.
The latest Home Office figures show that at least 4,684 have crossed the Channel so far this year. Last year, 36,816 people were detected making the crossing – down from a peak of 45,755 in 2022.
Stopping such perilous crossings has become a political priority in the UK. While it has scrapped the previous Tory government’s controversial scheme to send migrants to Rwanda as a deterrent, Sir Keir Starmer’s government has vowed to “smash the gangs” of people-smugglers facilitating the route and to step up deportations.
The Home Office published data in February showing it had “smashed its target” by carrying out nearly 19,000 deportations under Labour – more than in any year since 2018.
The government has ignored calls for more safe and legal routes to seek asylum in the UK as a means of reducing perilous Channel crossings.