Another body has been found on a beach in northern France – possibly a migrant who died attempting to cross the Channel to Britain. Reports say seven bodies have been found in the area in the past week.
The English Channel has claimed the lives of yet more migrants trying to reach the UK.
The French news agency AFP reported on Wednesday (November 6) that a body had been seen lying on a beach in the northern city of Calais that morning, surrounded by police and soldiers. A boat loaded with migrants had left the coast for England from the same beach earlier in the day, according to the report.
A day earlier, the bodies of two people were found drifting in the water off the coast of Calais.
The body of a man was found dead on a beach in nearby Sangatte on Saturday (November 2).
That discovery came just a few days after a migrant died when they fell into the sea off the French coast, and the dead bodies of three others were found on northern French beaches last Wednesday.
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Channel has become 'a cemetery'
More people have died crossing the Channel since the start of this year than in any year since 2018, when migrants began taking to boats to reach the UK in significant numbers.
Estimates of the number of people who have died trying to cross the Channel since the start of the year range between 50 and more than 60.
Nikolaï Posner from the aid group Utopia 56 criticized the lack of reaction to the latest deaths.
"Six lifeless bodies have been found at sea and on the beaches of Pas-de-Calais in the space of a week," he wrote on X.
"The Channel has truly become a cemetery."
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Hundreds rescued
Attempts to cross the Channel have increased in recent weeks, despite worsening weather conditions.
Overnight on Monday into Tuesday, 51 migrants were rescued by French authorities after their boat got into difficulty due to engine failure off Audresselles, between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer.
The rescued migrants were taken to Boulogne-sur-Mer where they were attended to by emergency services, according to a spokesperson for the French maritime prefecture.
On November 2, 39 people were rescued off the coast of Pas-de Calais, while a further 160 people were rescued overnight on October 31 to November 1.
British authorities say more than 31,530 people have made it to the UK so far this year, with 263 people reaching the coast of England on Wednesday.
Border security has been stepped up on both sides of the Channel in an effort to stop the crossings. In a high profile sentencing on Tuesday, a court in Lille found 18 people guilty in connection with migrant smuggling and a ringleader of a gang that organized 10,000 Channel crossings was jailed for 15 years. Most of those convicted were Iraqi Kurds.
Human rights organizations and refugee aid workers continue to urge governments to address the problem by establishing safe and legal routes for migrants to enter the UK.
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With dpa, AFP