French gendarme used a tractor to pull a damaged migrants’ boat after a failed attempt to cross the English Channel that led to the death of 8 people near the beach of Ambleteuse, northern France on September 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

At least eight people died during a failed attempt to cross the English Channel from northern France, French maritime authorities said on Sunday (September 15, 2024).

The incident occurred on Saturday (September 14, 2024) just before midnight when authorities spotted a boat, carrying dozens, in distress near a beach in the northern town of Ambleteuse.

A French rescue ship was deployed to the area and rescue services offered medical assistance to 53 migrants on the beach, a statement from the French maritime authorities in charge of the Channel and the North Sea said.

“Despite the emergency care provided, eight people have died,” the statement said.

No people were discovered during the search at sea, it added.

Six people were taken to hospital “in relative emergency,” including a 10-month-old baby with hypothermia, Jacques Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, told French media on Sunday. He said survivors of the accident come from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran.

Survivors of the tragedy have been taken to the sports hall in Ambleteuse, according to a statement from the prefecture of Pas-de-Calais region. Prosecutor’s office in Boulogne-sur-mer has opened an investigation into the accident.

The incident on Saturday occurred nearly two weeks after a boat carrying migrants ripped apart in the English Channel as they attempted to reach Britain from northern France, plunging dozens into the treacherous waterway and leaving 12 dead, officials said.

British officials were quick to express sadness over another English Channel incident.

“It’s awful,’’ Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the BBC. “It’s a further loss of life.”

The new Labour Party government has pledged to crack down on criminal gangs plying the channel trade and had discussed with European partners “how we go after those gangs, in co-operation upstream.’’

Europe’s increasingly strict asylum rules, growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants have been pushing them north. Before Saturday’s accident, at least 43 migrants had died or gone missing while trying to cross to the U.K. this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Other surveillance and rescue operations are underway on Sunday along the entire Pas-de-Calais coast amid stormy weather conditions and agitated sea, French maritime authorities said. They warned anyone who tries to cross the Channel on flimsy and overloaded boats and in often difficult weather conditions of “significant risks.”

On Saturday, French coast guard and navy vessels rescued 200 people from the treacherous waters in the Pas-de-Calais area, according to a report sent by French maritime authorities in charge of the Channel and the North Sea.

They said they observed 18 attempts of boat departures from France to Britain on Saturday.

In July, four migrants died while attempting the crossing on an inflatable boat that capsized and punctured. Five others, including a child, died in another attempt in April. Five dead were recovered from the sea or found washed up along a beach after a migrant boat ran into difficulties in the dark and winter cold of January.

At least 13 people have died when a migrant boat sank off Yemen, also leaving 14 missing, a U.N. agency said Sunday (August 25, 2024), in the latest disaster on the perilous migration route.

“Thirteen people have tragically lost their lives and 14 others remain missing after a migrant boat capsized off the coast of Yemen’s Taez governorate on Tuesday,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

“The vessel had departed from Djibouti carrying 25 Ethiopian migrants and two Yemeni nationals,” according to the U.N. agency.

“Eleven men and two women were among those confirmed dead, as search operations continue to locate the missing, including the Yemeni captain and his assistant,” the IOM said.

It noted that the cause of the shipwreck remains unclear.

“This latest tragedy is a stark reminder of the perils faced by migrants on this route,” said Matt Huber, the acting chief of IOM’s mission in Yemen.

Tens of thousands of migrants set off yearly from the Horn of Africa, seeking to escape conflict, natural disasters or poor economic prospects and sailing across the Red Sea in a bid to reach the oil-rich Gulf.

Also Read: At least 49 migrants dead, 140 missing off Yemen coast

The IOM recorded over 97,200 migrant arrivals in Yemen in 2023, surpassing the previous year’s numbers.

The latest shipwreck follows similar incidents off Yemen in June and July that left dozens dead.

Migrants who do reach Yemen often encounter further threats to their safety, as the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country has been mired in civil war for nearly a decade.

Many are trying to reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries where they can find employment as labourers or domestic workers.

Villagers search through a landslide in Pogera village, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, on May 26, 2024. The International Organization for Migration feared Sunday the death toll from a massive landslide is much worse than what authorities initially estimated.
| Photo Credit: AP

The International Organization for Migration on May 26 increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea to more than 670 as emergency responders and traumatized relatives gave up hope that any survivors will now be found.

Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the U.N. migration agency’s mission in the South Pacific island nation, said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday’s landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes.

“They are estimating that more than 670 people (are) under the soil at the moment,” Mr. Aktoprak told The Associated Press.

Local officials had initially put the death toll on Friday at 100 or more. Only five bodies and a leg of a sixth victim had been recovered by Sunday.

Relief crews were moving survivors to safer ground on Sunday as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, threatened the rescue effort.

The national government meanwhile is considering whether it needs to officially request more international support.

Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) deep.

“People are coming to terms with this so there is a serious level of grieving and mourning,” Mr. Aktoprak said.

He said the new estimated death toll was “not solid” because it was based on the average size of the region’s families per household. He would not speculate on the possibility that the actual toll could be higher.

“It is difficult to say. We want to be quite realistic,” Mr. Aktoprak said. “We do not want to come up with any figures that would inflate the reality.”

Government authorities were establishing evacuation centers on safer ground on either side of the massive swath of debris that covers an area the size of three to four football fields and has cut the main highway through the province.

Beside the blocked highway, convoys that have transported food, water and other essential supplies since Saturday to the devastated village 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the provincial capital, Wabag, have faced risks related to tribal fighting in Tambitanis village, about halfway along the route. Papua New Guinea soldiers were providing security for the convoys.

Eight locals were killed in a clash between two rival clans on Saturday in a longstanding dispute unrelated to the landslide. Around 30 homes and five retail businesses were burned down in the fighting, local officials said.

Mr. Aktoprak said he did not expect tribal combatants would target the convoys but noted that opportunistic criminals might take advantage of the mayhem to do so.

“This could basically end up in carjacking or robbery,” Aktoprak said. “There is not only concern for the safety and security of the personnel, but also the goods because they may use this chaos as a means to steal.”

Longtime tribal warfare has cast doubt on the official estimate that almost 4,000 people were living in the village when a side of Mount Mungalo fell away. The count was years old and did not take into account people who had relocated to the village more recently to flee clan violence that goverment authorities are unable to contain.

Justine McMahon, country director of the humanitarian agency CARE International, said moving survivors to “more stable ground” was an immediate priority along with providing them with food, water and shelter. The military was leading those efforts.

The numbers of injured and missing were still being assessed on Sunday. Seven people including a child had received medical treatment by Saturday, but officials had no details on their conditions.

Papua New Guinea Defense Minister Billy Joseph and the government’s National Disaster Center director Laso Mana were flying from Port Moresby by helicopter to Wabag on Sunday to gain a firsthand perspective of what is needed.

Mr. Aktoprak expected the government would decide by Tuesday whether it would officially request more international help.

The United States and Australia, a near neighbor and Papua New Guinea’s most generous provider of foreign aid, are among governments that have publicly stated their readiness to do more to help responders.

Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing nation with 800 languages and 10 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers.

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said the biggest increase in deaths was on the Mediterranean Sea. File
| Photo Credit: AP

A total of 8,565 migrants died on land and sea routes worldwide last year, the U.N. migration agency said March 6, a record high since it began tallying deaths a decade ago.

The International Organisation for Migration said the biggest increase in deaths last year was on the treacherous Mediterranean Sea crossing, to 3,129 from 2,411 in 2022. However, that was well below the record 5,136 deaths recorded in the Mediterranean in 2016 as huge numbers of Syrians, Afghans and others fled conflicts toward Europe.

IOM said the total number of deaths among migrants in 2023 was nearly 20% more than in 2022. It said most of the deaths last year, about 3,700, came from drowning.

The Geneva-based migration agency cautioned that the figures likely underestimate the real toll, and factors such as improved data collection methods play a part in its calculations.

“Every single one of them is a terrible human tragedy that reverberates through families and communities for years to come,” IOM Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement.

Rise in deaths in Asia, Africa

Overall, the biggest jump in deaths in recent years was in Asia, where more than 2,000 migrants died compared to an annual average of under 1,000 since 2014. IOM said 2,138 migrants died in Asia last year, 68 more than in 2022.

The rise in Asia last year was primarily because of increased deaths among Afghans fleeing to places like neighbouring Iran and among Rohingya refugees on maritime routes, IOM spokesperson Jorge Galindo said in an email.

IOM said a record number of deaths also occurred in Africa last year — 1,866 — mostly in the Sahara Desert and along the sea route to the Canary Islands.

The agency cited difficulties in data collection in remote areas, such as in the dangerous “Darien Gap” in Panama, where many migrants pass from South America on their way north.

IOM’s “Missing Migrants” project, which tallies the figures, was set up in 2014 after a surge in deaths in the Mediterranean and an influx of migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa off Tunisia.