One person has drowned after an inflatable dinghy carrying 66 migrants and refugees towards Britain ran into difficulty off France's northern coast, the French coastguard said in a statement Friday.

Rescue teams reached the distressed boat at about 1 a.m. local time (0000 GMT) and found that one of its inflatable tubes had deflated.

Two unconscious people were pulled from the sea. One was airlifted to the French port city of Calais, while the other could not be revived, the coastguard said in a statement.

Boats and aircraft are still looking for remaining survivors around Griz Nez, near the port of Calais, the statement continued.

The English Channel, which separates the United Kingdom and continental Europe, is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

Drop in the number of migrant crossings 

Tens of thousands of people a year have been making the dangerous crossing of the sea from France in small boats seeking to migrate to the UK.

So far this year, more than 29,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing in small boats, according to Migration Watch UK, representing a fall of about one-third compared to 2022.

The largest number of deaths in a single incident took place in November 2021 when at least 27 migrants died after a dinghy sank in the Channel.

In August this year, six Afghans drowned after their small boat capsized.

In late November, a migrant boat carrying 60 people sank and a man and woman drowned.

French authorities say that boats are increasingly overloaded, with the average number of about 53 passengers nearly double the average of two years ago.

The issue of small-boat migration has become a major political priority for the UK government and a bone of contention between London and Paris.

mm/rt (AFP, Reuters) 

First published: December 15, 2023

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