Five migrants have died while attempting to cross the English Channel to the UK from France.
The incident happened in the early hours of Sunday morning off the coast of France near Wimereux beach.
“When a boat left the beach, people found themselves in difficulty at sea to reach the boat”, local media reported, citing the maritime prefecture.
French paper La Voix du Nord said 72 people, including 10 children, were rescued and taken to Calais while one person was taken to hospital in Boulogne.
The migrants were trying to reach a boat in freezing water in an effort to cross the Channel in the dark of night, a spokeswoman from the maritime prefecture told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
She added that the incident took place at around 2am local time (1am UK time).
An intervention boat “which was on patrol in the area launched its boat to rescue the shipwrecked people” before the crew “identified inanimate and unconscious people in the water”, the spokeswoman told AFP.
A French navy helicopter, police and 50 firefighters were involved in the rescue operation.
The UK Coastguard could not comment because the incident took place in French territorial waters.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
It comes after the first migrants to cross the Channel to the UK in 2024 were recorded on Saturday morning after 27 days of no crossings – the longest gap in small boat arrivals for just over five years.
Read more:
Small boat arrivals in UK could hit 35,000 this year’
No small boat crossings over Christmas for first time in five years
How did your MP vote on the Rwanda bill?
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the reported deaths of four migrants in the Channel on Sunday was “heartbreaking”.
He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “It’s heartbreaking when these things happen, and the loss of life that takes place.
“And you can only think about what an appalling end it would be, and the cold waters of the Channel in the middle of the night, it breaks my heart to hear about it.
“But it just shows we’ve got to stop the boats, we’ve got to stop this illegal trade in human beings.”
