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A migrant died while trying to cross the Channel to Britain from France on an overcrowded vessel Friday in the latest in a series of deadly shipwrecks, police said.
It was the third such journey ending in death within a week, the maritime police said, adding that 85 people were rescued after the authorities responded to their distress call.
A police source said the migrant who died was of Sudanese origin. The others rescued from the vessels were mostly Ethiopian, Eritrean or Sudanese.
Shortly before 1:00 am (2300 GMT Thursday) the migrants asked a French navy patrol for assistance as their vessel began to sink, police said.
The patrol rescued five people drifting in the water, and transferred the others over from the vessel. That was when the crew discovered that one man had died.
Police arrested three people who were on board the vessel, prosecutors in the town of Boulgne-sur-Mer told AFP.
On Wednesday, off Gravelines on the French coast, an Eritrean woman died trying to cross over on a vessel carrying 72 migrants.
Last Friday four migrants drowned off Boulogne-sur-Mer when their deflated vessel sank, with a navy patrol rescuing dozens of others from the water.
– Survivor recounts rescue –
About 100 people including migrants gathered in Calais on Friday evening with candles, some of them weeping, in a vigil for those who died.
One of them, an Ethiopian migrant aged 25 who asked to be identified only as Dargie, said he survived Wednesday’s wreck.
“It was very difficult, the boat sank because of the overload,” he told AFP.
He said he had helped two women and two children from the capsized boat to get on board a French navy vessel.
“I was safe and I had a safety jacket on, so I had confidence and I could save other people,” he said.
“We knew we would face some risks on our journey, so it happened, what we expected.”
Despite the risks, he said he was still determined to head for England.
“I have no choice… If I get a better opportunity from crossing the border, I will accept it.”
Another survivor, Anwar Muhammad, told AFP the migrants had been told there would be 40 people on the boat but there were far more and only 20 had life jackets.
Friday’s death brought to 22 the number of migrants to have died trying to cross the Channel so far this year.
Over the whole of 2023, the figure was 12, according to French maritime police.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to “strengthen their cooperation on irregular migration” in bilateral talks on Thursday.
Starmer earlier said there was “no easy silver bullet” to stop small boats making the perilous crossing.
