At least 31 migrants die while crossing the English Channel

At least 31 migrants drowned after a small, unsafe boat capsized while crossing the English Channel to reach the British coast, according to the mayor of Calais, a port in northern France.

According to local fishermen, on Wednesday, December 2nd, due to calm seas, a much larger number of migrants left the French coast for Britain.

A fisherman notified the coast guard and rescue workers after seeing the overturned boat and motionless bodies floating on the surface of the water.

The mayor of the port of Calais, one of the main points of movement of migrants to the British coast, announced in an interview with a local television channel that the death toll was at least 31.

The coast guard said it could not immediately say how many people had drowned, adding that rescue workers found 20 people at the scene, only two of whom were alive.

The initial assessment by the Coast Guard and local authorities is that the capsized boat had about 40 people on board.

"The capsizing of a boat and the drowning of a number of migrants in the English Channel is a very painful incident," French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted on his way to the port of Calais.

Local authorities said two helicopters and three coast guard boats were dispatched to the scene for search and rescue operations.

A local fisherman told Reuters he saw two plastic boats near the shore on Wednesday morning, one carrying passengers and the other empty.

According to him, one of his colleagues notified rescue workers and the French Coast Guard after seeing an empty boat and about 15 bodies floating on the water.

He added that on Wednesday, due to the calm weather in the region, more migrant boats were seen along the coast, although the air and sea water were very cold.

Reuters reporters also saw a group of more than 40 migrants heading towards Britain on a plastic boat on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said the country would not allow the English Channel to become a "graveyard." He also said those responsible for the tragedy must be found.

The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and the waters in the region are rough and rough, making it difficult for unsafe plastic boats filled with passengers to withstand the waves.

Although French police say they have stepped up their efforts to prevent migrants from reaching Britain, figures released by the UK's Immigration Service show that the number of migrants crossing the English Channel to the UK's shores has increased significantly this year.

This issue has become a source of tension in French-British relations.

A spokesman for the British Prime Minister's Office said Boris Johnson will head a cabinet emergency committee to investigate the migrant deaths and the migration crisis in the English Channel.

Source: Radio Farda