A boat loaded with migrants sank in the English Channel during an attempted landing on the British coast. The death toll is heavy, which according to the port authorities would be at least 30. It is the most serious tragedy of migrants ever to occur in the English Channel: so far the worst was that of last October which cost the lives of 4 Kurdish citizens.
The French Minister of the Interior, in addition to saying he was “shocked” by the incident, accused “the criminal behavior of the traffickers who organize these crossings”.
There are also five women and a girl among the victims of the shipwreck: this is what police sources quoted by the newspaper Libération report. Also according to the same sources, two human traffickers were stopped north of Dunkirk, near the Franco-Belgian border, and placed in custody by French agents. Of the 34 migrants aboard the boat, police sources specify, only two would have been rescued.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urgently convened the Cobra Committee for Emergency Management. London has long urged Paris to take more incisive action to curb the flow of smugglers’ boats that try to reach Great Britain from the French coasts: a flow that has intensified in recent months, despite the bilateral agreements co-financed by the Kingdom and the promises of the Tory government on a close post Brexit of border controls, reaching peaks of over 1000 arrivals per day.
“We have some difficulty in persuading some of our partners, in particular, the French, to do all the things that we believe the situation requires,” said the British premier. “I understand the difficulties that all countries face, but we want to do more together (in Paris),” he added, not without renewing his confidence in his interior minister, Priti Patel.