Eight migrants die while trying to cross English Channel
Eight migrants have died while attempting to cross the English Channel from France, French officials said.
A number of people died off the coast between the French ports of Calais and Boulougne overnight.
A rigid inflatable boat carrying around 50 people ran aground, regional prefect Jacques Billant said.
He added that eight unidentified migrants were declared dead at the scene.
It comes after 12 people, including six children and a pregnant woman, died in a boat sinking earlier this month. It was the deadliest Channel crossing this year.
French authorities rescued 200 people in a 24-hour period over Friday and Saturday.
Responding to the reports of more migrant deaths in the English Channel, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “It’s awful. It’s a further loss of life.”
He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme he had been to the National Crime Agency and seen the “awful sort of rubber dinghies that people are coming across the Channel with, many of them, of course, not able to make it in these contraptions”.
The Government has been “discussing how we go after those gangs, in co-operation upstream with other European partners”.
Sir Keir Starmer will be in Italy on Monday for talks with counterpart Giorgia Meloni about her efforts to tackle the problem “and the work they have done, particularly, with Albania”.
The Prime Minister has said he is interested in the rollout of the policy, under which Tirana will accept asylum seekers on Italy’s behalf while their claims are processed.