San Francisco Frontiers - Two dead in attempted Channel crossings: French officials

The first migrant -- a man aged 30 to 35 -- died overnight Thursday to Friday off the coast of Gravelines as an overcrowded inflatable boat capsized, regional prosecutors said. The boat was carrying 50 men, seven women and two children.

Two people were missing, but the search for them was called off at nightfall Friday, prosecutors said.

A man suspected of piloting the boat was arrested, prosecutors said.

French sea rescue coordinators at Gris Nez, near the northern port city Calais, were warned during the night that a migrant boat was in difficulty less than eight kilometres (five miles) from the coast.

A rescue vessel arrived in the area at around 30 minutes past midnight (2330 GMT), maritime authorities said.

After the crew found one of the migrant boat's buoyancy tubes "deflated" and people "in the water", they brought everyone they could find back to Calais.

In a separate incident, the body of a migrant was found on a beach in Sangatte on Friday morning after an aborted crossing attempt, according to a police source.

The victim was probably Sudanese, the source said.

The exact cause of death was not yet known, said the Boulogne-sur-Mer public prosecutor's office, which opened an investigation into "involuntary manslaughter".

According to the prosecutors, "a group of 70 migrants went to sea in a 'small boat', but the boat returned to the beach" around 7:00 a.m.

At least eight people had previously died in migrant Channel crossings since the start of the year, according to authorities.

- 'A tragedy' -

"This is of course a tragedy," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters in Calais after meeting local security forces.

"We're talking about women, men and children who are being used by people smugglers," said Darmanin, who is pushing to overhaul French immigration law to impose tougher rules on irregular migrants.

He was met by dozens of demonstrators at Calais' central police station chanting against a "racist state and complicit police," AFP journalists saw.

The region around Calais, the jumping-off point for the shortest Channel crossing to Britain, has long been a hotspot for migration.

Two decades after the closure of a Red Cross centre in Sangatte, hundreds of people still live in tents and makeshift shelters near Calais and Dunkirk, hoping for an opportunity to make the crossing hidden in a truck or aboard a small boat.

Small boats are a political priority for the British government and a bone of contention with France, as tens of thousands of people a year have been making the dangerous crossing.

The human toll has been high, with one of the worst-ever sinkings two years ago claiming 27 lives.

- 'Risk, distress and deaths' -

French security forces' attempts to thwart the migrants before they take to the water "have done nothing but increase the risk, distress and deaths", migrant aid group Utopia 56 wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The issue has become a huge political controversy for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who wants to implement a contested scheme to deport arriving migrants to Rwanda as a deterrent.

In late November a migrant boat carrying 60 people sank, drowning a man and woman both in their 30s. A body found on a beach several days later may have been another passenger on the same boat.

In August this year, six Afghans aged 21 to 34 lost their lives after their small boat capsized.

French authorities say that boats are increasingly overloaded, with the average number of about 53 passengers nearly double the average of two years ago.

As of late November, more than 28,000 people have crossed the Channel since the start of this year, according to British government statistics, compared with almost 46,000 over the whole of last year.

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V.Mitchell--SFF