Four migrants died on Friday while attempting to cross the English Channel to enter the UK, French authorities said.
Another 56 people have been rescued after their boat deflated, leaving several adrift at sea, according to the Maritime Prefect of the English Channel and the North Sea.
A French coast guard spokesperson said separately that 63 people were rescued.
The four deaths on Friday brought the recorded small boat death toll since 2014 to an estimated 83 people.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the loss of life is “truly awful.”
The deflated boat was spotted at around 4:30 a.m. by rescue vessel Minck, which was patrolling the Channel.
More vessels and a helicopter were deployed to assist the rescue. A fishing vessel nearby also contributed to the effort.
Rescuers recovered four unconscious people, including three from sea and one on the boat wreck, but a medical team was not able to resuscitate them.
The prefecture said a further 56 people were picked up during the rescue mission.
Reacting to the news, the home secretary said on social media platform X: “The further loss of life in the Channel this morning is truly awful. My thoughts are with all those affected.
“Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk. We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue & bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”
Her predecessor James Cleverly also said the deaths are “a tragedy.”
“As a country we must do everything in our power to stop the boats and put an end to this vile trade in human suffering,” he wrote on X.
While other causes of deaths—including vehicle accidents, sickness, and violence—are accounted for, 241 deaths have been recorded during the same period, with at least 15 missing, the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project data show.
On Thursday, 62 illegal immigrants successfully made the journey to the UK on one boat, according to the latest provisional figures published by the Home Office.
A total of 546 small boat arrivals have been detected during the first week of the Labour government. As of July 11, a total of 14,120 illegal immigrants entered the UK on small boats in 2024, the highest year-to-date number since recording began in 2018.
Channel crossing on small boats has been increasing since 2018, overtaking air travel to become the main route of illegal entry in 2020.
Since 2018, 128,442 illegal immigrants have been detected crossing the channel on 3,874 boats.
The Tories tried to deter crossings by sending illegal arrivals, including asylum seekers, on a one-way trip to Rwanda, but the scheme was yet to take off when the party lost the general election last week.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who called the Rwanda deportation plan a costly “gimmick” that will never work, confirmed that the multi-million-pound scheme is “dead and buried.”
