Four people, including a two-year-old boy, have died while attempting to cross the English Channel, French authorities say.
The authorities said they were found “unconscious” and were likely “trampled to death” in two separate boats that had engine failures.
French interior minister Bruno Retailleau called the deaths a “terrible tragedy”, adding that people smugglers “have the blood of these people on their hands”.
In one of the incidents, a French rescue service picked up 15 people, including the boy, and one person was airlifted to a French hospital with burns to their legs.
According to the Boulogne-Sur-Mer prosecutor Guirec Le Bras, the young boy, who he said was born in Germany to a Somali mother, was “trampled to death”.
A person on the vessel with burns to their legs was airlifted to hospital, Billant added.
The remaining passengers on the boat continued their journey, the AFP news agency reported.
On a separate overcrowded small boat, another incident happened overnight off the coast of Calais when “multiple engine failures led to a stampede and some migrants fell into the water but were rescued”, Billant told journalists.
“Three people – two men and a woman – were then discovered unconscious inside this small boat,” he added. Billant said they were all about 30 years old.
