Two migrants died in the English Channel today as they tried reach Britain on a massively overcrowded small boat.
One was a 64-year-old Kuwaiti man, who is believed to be the eldest person to die crossing the Channel on a small boat since the journeys started.
He was declared dead on the beach by a team of French paramedics.
The disaster unfolded close to the French coast at Marck, near Calais, at around 7am on Saturday morning.
Despite the deaths of the two unnamed migrants, the boat they were travelling in carried on with its illegal journey to Britain after their bodies were taken off.
‘A small boat set off in the early hours but then returned to France within a few minutes,’ said a local emergency services source.
‘There were about 50 people on board, and among them were the motionless bodies of two of them.
‘He has suffered a heart attack in the boat,’ said the source, who said he had no details about the second victim.
Two migrants died in the English Channel today as they tried to reach Britain on a massively overcrowded small boat
Despite the deaths of the two unnamed migrants, the boat they were travelling in carried on with its illegal journey to Britain after their bodies were taken off
‘When the corpses were taken off, some of the others on the boat also got off, and were seen running into dunes,’ said the source.
‘Others decided to get back on the dinghy, which continued on its voyage to England.’
Conditions were good in the Channel, with bright sunshine and a calm sea, suggesting that the Kuwaiti man may have suffered a heart attack because of over-crowding.
Most of the flimsy dinghies used in such crossings are designed for 12 people maximum.
Today’s disaster means that a total of eight people have died in similar circumstances this year alone, as the small boats crisis continued.
Prosecutors in France have started an enquiry, while judicial police are looking for the people smugglers who arranged the crossing.
At total of 78 migrants died in 2024 while trying to reach England in the same way.
This was a record since smugglers started launching small boats full of migrants in 2018.
The disaster unfolded close to the French coast at Marck, near Calais, at around 7am on Saturday morning
In January, a Syrian man became the first UK-bound migrant of 2025 to die in the Channel after being crushed to death in an overcrowded boat.
French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said of such tragedies: ‘Our government will intensify the fight against these mafias who are getting rich by organising these crossings of death.’
In April last year, a criminal enquiry was launched following the deaths of five migrants including a little girl around Wimereux, near Calais.
The worst tragedy of this kind came in November 2021, when 27 migrants died after a dinghy sank while heading to the UK – the highest recorded number of deaths from a single incident.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have pledged to ‘strengthen cooperation’ to fight the people smugglers, but they are regulary criticised for not doing enough.
