‘Please help us. There are children’: The desperate distress call from migrants on sinking boat

‘Water is going into the boat through the stern,’ charity told

Migrants sent a voice note calling for help as their boat started to take on water crossing the English Channel, telling a French charity: “Please help us. There are children.”

Four people have died and dozens rescued after a small boat got into trouble while making the journey in bitterly cold temperatures in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A French charity said it received a distressed voice note on the same night from people on a boat in the Channel.

”We are in a boat, we have a problem,” it said, according to Utopia56.

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“There are children and there are families in the boat. Water is going into the boat through the stern.”

“We are in the water and we have a family,” the voice note - which was also accompanied by a location pin - reportedly added.

Utopia56 operates in northern France and tells migrants to call if they come into danger making the Channel crossing.

The charity said it could not be certain the voice note came from the same boat that saw four people onboard killed, but the location of the rescue boats and hours of the rescue mission suggested it could have been.

Lifeboats were sent to help the rescue mission in the Channel (REUTERS)

British authorities said they were alerted to a small boat incident off the coast of Kent shortly after 3am on Wednesday. A search and rescue mission was launched involving lifeboats and helicopters.

Four were confirmed dead later in the day. Government sources told the PA news agency 43 people were rescued in total with more than 30 of those pulled from the water.

The tragedy came just over a year after 27 were killed when a boat capsized in the Channel. Five are still missing from this shipwreck.

The Independent revealed last month coastguard failings that took place in the run-up to the disaster.

Rishi Sunak expressed his “sorrow” at the latest “capsizing of a small boat” in the Channel on Wednesday, telling MPs there had been a “tragic loss of human life”.