A seven-year-old girl drowned yesterday when a small boat carrying 16 migrants heading from northern France to Britain capsized, the prefecture in France’s Nord department said.
The boat “was not appropriately sized to carry so many people,” the local authority said in a statement, causing it to capsize soon after people boarded in the Aa canal a few kilometres from the waterway’s exit into the Channel.
The inland accident is the latest in a trend that has seen migrants aiming to get to Britain from France boarding boats away from the coast to avoid stepped-up surveillance there.
Police and firemen rushed to the scene after a person out for a walk raised the alarm, the prefecture added.
The seven-year-old girl had died “on the spot of the effects of cardio-respiratory arrest,” prosecutors in Dunkirk said, adding that rescuers’ attempts to resuscitate her had been ‘in vain’.
“Several people are in custody” over the incident, they added, with investigators probing possible charges including manslaughter, people-smuggling and forming a criminal gang.
The prefecture said the girl’s parents, who were travelling with three more of their children, were taken to a hospital in Dunkirk.
Prosecutors said that 10 children aged seven to 13 had been on the boat, with the prefecture identifying the other passengers as the girl’s parents, another couple and two young men.
It added that the vessel was ‘apparently stolen’.
Migrant crossings of the English Channel remain a sore point between Britain and France, with 671 reaching England in February.
A deal struck in March 2023 provides for $586 million in British funding for hundreds of French police to prevent migrants from putting to sea.
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