Five die attempting Channel crossing, say French police

At least five people, including a child, died overnight during an attempt to cross the Channel from France to Britain, a French police source said on Tuesday.

Published: 23 April 2024 10:54 CEST

Five die attempting Channel crossing, say French police

The shoreline in Wimereux, northern France. Photo by Denis CHARLET / AFP

The source, who did not wish to be named, said the circumstances of their death around the beach in the town of Wimereux, close to the resort of Boulogne-sur-Mer, were not immediately clear.

It is just the latest such tragedy as people, many from the Middle East and Africa, attempt the perilous sea crossing in the hope of reaching Britain.

On March 3rd, a seven-year-old girl drowned in the capsizing of an overcrowded migrant boat in the Aa canal, around 30 kilometres from France’s northern coast.

People attempting to reach Britain have increasingly been boarding boats on inland waterways to avoid stepped-up patrols on the French coast.

In late February, a 22-year-old Turkish man died and two more people went missing in the Channel off Calais.

In January, five people including a 14-year-old Syrian died in Wimereux as they waded through chilly seawater to reach a boat off the coast.

Twelve people lost their lives last year trying to cross the Channel, French authorities say.

British officials processed 5,373 arrivals landing on the shores of southeast England in the first three months of this year after crossing the Channel in small vessels, the British interior ministry says.

The news of the latest migrant deaths comes after controversial UK government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda cleared a final hurdle in parliament on Monday.

The United Nations and Europe’s highest rights body have urged Britain to scrap the plan.

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Police intervened as dozens of students gathered on a central Paris campus of the prestigious Sciences Po university on Wednesday evening, management said.

“After discussions with management, most of them agreed to leave the premises,” university officials said in a statement to AFP, saying the protest was adding to “tensions” at the university.

But “a small group of students” refused to leave and “it was decided that the police would evacuate the site,” the statement added.

Sciences Po said it regretted that “numerous attempts” to have the students leave the premises peacefully had led nowhere.

According to the police préfecture, students had set up around 10 tents.

When members of law enforcement arrived, “50 students left on their own, 70 were evacuated calmly from 0.20am” and the police “left at 1.30am, with no incidents to report,” the police said.

The protesters demanded that Sciences Po “cut its ties with universities and companies that are complicit in the genocide in Gaza” and “end the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus,” according to witnesses.

The protest was organised by the Palestine Committee of Sciences Po.

In a statement on Thursday, the group said its activists had been “carried out of the school by more than fifty members of the security forces,” adding that “around a hundred” police officers were “also waiting for them outside”.

Sciences Po management “stubbornly refuses to engage in genuine dialogue,” the group said.

The organisers have called for “a clear condemnation of Israel’s actions by Sciences Po” and a commemorative event “in memory of the innocent people killed by Israel,” among other demands.

Separately, the Student Union of Sciences Po Paris said the decision by university officials to call in the police was “both shocking and deeply worrying” and reflected “an unprecedented authoritarian turn”.

Many top US universities have been rocked by protests in recent weeks, with some students furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s biggest Muslim community.

The war in Gaza began with an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7th that resulted in the deaths of around 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

In retaliation, Israel launched a military offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.