Three men have been arrested on suspicion of immigration offences as part of an investigation into the deaths of five people, including a child, in the Channel yesterday.
Three men, a woman and a seven-year-old girl died while attempting to reach the UK in a small boat, close to the French shore on Tuesday morning.
The National Crime Agency has said investigators are questioning two men from Sudan, aged 19 and 22, and a third man, 22, from South Sudan over the disaster.
They were arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration and entering the UK illegally.
French authorities say a group of up to 50 migrants stormed the boat, which was already full of people who had paid smugglers for the crossing to the UK, crushing those onboard.
Survivors of Tuesday’s tragedy have been interviewed by NCA investigators and are expected to be spoken to again in the coming days.
Craig Turner, deputy director of investigations for the National Crime Agency said: “This tragic incident once again demonstrates the threat to life posed by these crossings and bring into focus why it is so important to target the criminal gangs involved in organising them.
“We will do all we can with partners in the UK and France to secure evidence, identify those responsible for this event, and bring them to justice.”
A dinghy carrying more than 100 people set off from Wimereux at around 6am French time yesterday, but got into difficulty a few hundred metres from shore, with a seven-year-old girl, three men and a woman dying.
French officials said there was a crush onboard the inflatable vessel when it became overloaded after dozens of migrants forced their way onboard, with 58 people continuing with the Channel crossing after 49 were rescued.
The French state prosecutor in Boulogne has launched a manslaughter investigation and is probing allegations of people smuggling and assisting illegal immigration.
Guirec Le Bras, the Boulogne-sur-mer prosecutor, said accounts from survivors indicated the inflatable dinghy was supposed to be transporting 40 to 50 migrants who had paid smuggling gangs for passage to the UK.
Mr Le Bras told i: “At the time of departure, between 40 and 50 migrants reportedly came out of the woods and forced themselves onto the boat, crushing many people already on board.
“At the same time, some continued to push the boat out to sea, which resulted in more than 100 migrants on the boat, far from the shores.”
Testimonies from people brought back to land did not suggest the victims had drowned or the boat had capsized. However, the exact details of the five victims’ deaths were not confirmed, he added, with investigations set to determine the causes.
A BBC reporter who witnessed Tuesday’s events said some migrants were brandishing long sticks at the police, and throwing flares or firecrackers.
Véronique Magnin, a spokesperson for the Maritime Prefecture, the French authority that coordinates small-boat emergency responses, said rigid inflatable boats (RIB) were dispatched from rescue ship Abeille Normandie to help the migrants when their dinghy got into trouble after hitting a sandbank.
“Once the zodiac [RIB] arrived they realised there were two people overboard. But the main problem was there were some people who were injured on the small boat,” she said.
“We think that perhaps there was a stampede or a scramble on the small boat. We think the five people that died were hurt in the scramble.
“It is the first time that we observed that we have more than 100 people on a small boat of around 10 or 12 metres. It’s the first time that we have a person die on a boat and not in the water.”
People-smuggling gangs have used barbaric methods in the past as migrants tried to make the perilous Channel trip, she said.
“It has happened before that you have different groups who want to go on on the same boat and once this boat is off the coast and… if there are people who have not paid enough they are thrown overboard by the smugglers,” she added.
Célestin Pichaud, coordinator for French charity Utopia 56 which supports migrants on the coast, said they had received previous accounts of groups of people trying to charge onto small boats leaving for the UK further up the coast.
“We used to hear about it near Calais or Dunkirk but it’s the first time near Wimereux. We don’t know why,” he added.
On the same day, small boats containing 402 migrants crossed the Channel to UK waters on Tuesday, with an average of around 57 people per boat.
Young children and babies were among those seen being brought ashore in Dover, Kent, with someone seen being taken on a stretcher from a lifeboat to an ambulance.
The numbers arriving on small boats to the English coast from France so far in 2024 are up 20 per cent on the same period last year.
The latest crossings take the provisional total for the year so far to 6,667 compared to 5,546 during the same timescale in 2023.
This year’s figures so far are down by 0.4 per cent compared to 2022 (6,691), which was the record year for small boat crossings since the crisis began in 2018.
Some 29,437 people made the journey in 2023, down 36 per cent on the 45,774 arrivals in 2022.
The father of the young girl who died was among the survivors in Tuesday’s tragedy, eyewitnesses said.
Charity worker Sandrine, who witnessed the incident, told Sky News: “I saw them bringing in the bodies and the father fell into my arms,” she said.
“I said to myself: ‘This can’t be possible. He has a child’.
“They tried to resuscitate her, but she had died. The helicopters arrived and then there were four other bodies.
“The father saw his daughter die before him.”
The deaths came just hours after the UK parliament passed the Government’s Rwanda bill with Rishi Sunak aiming for the first deportation flights to leave in the summer.
A UK Government spokesperson said: “Yesterday, the French authorities responded to an incident in the Channel which resulted in the loss of five lives.
“These deaths in the Channel are devastating and our thoughts are with the victims’ family and friends at this time.
“This is another reminder of the extreme dangers of crossing the Channel in small boats and of how vital it is that we work closely together with France to prevent people from making these dangerous crossings.”