A boat carrying migrants ripped apart in the English Channel as they attempted to reach Britain from northern France yesterday, plunging dozens into the treacherous waterway and leaving 12 dead, authorities said.
Many didn’t have life preservers in what one official called the deadliest migrant accident in the channel this year.
“Unfortunately, the bottom of the boat ripped open,” said Olivier Barbarin, mayor of Le Portel near the fishing port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where a first aid post was set up to treat victims. “If people don’t know how to swim in the agitated waters … it can go very quickly.”
The mayor said 12 died after initially giving a toll of 13. Lt. Etienne Baggio, a spokesman for the French maritime prefecture that oversees that stretch of sea, said rescuers pulled a total of 65 people from the waters in a search operation that lasted more than four hours. Doctors confirmed 12 did not survive, he said.
Baggio called it the deadliest migrant boat tragedy in the English Channel this year.
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