French minister says EU, UK need 'migration treaty' after Channel deaths
France's Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin called for a treaty on migration between the EU and Britain Tuesday, after 12 migrants died trying to cross the Channel in the worst such incident this year.
Several were injured after their boat carrying dozens ran into trouble off Wimereux, a town some five kilometres from Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern French coast.
A source close to the investigation said the dead included three minors.
According to the Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor, Guirec Le Bras, the migrants who died were mostly from Eritrea. Ten of them were female and two male, he said. Half the total were minors.
Crew on a French government-operated ship, the Minck, were the first to become aware of the emergency and to respond, naval officer Etienne Baggio told French news agency AFP.
French navy helicopters, fishing boats and military vessels were mobilised for the operation, he said.
"Unfortunately, the bottom of the boat ripped open," said Olivier Barbarin, mayor of Le Portel near the fishing port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where a first aid post was set up to treat survivors.
Money alone can't fix the problem
Darmanin, who rushed to the site of the tragedy Tuesday, told reporters that the EU and Britain needed to negotiate a new treaty on migration.
Under the deal, negotiated by former British prime minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron, London agreed to step up funding to France to total €541 million ($575 million), allowing the deployment of "hundreds" of extra French law enforcement officers along the Channel coast.
UK interior minister Yvette Cooper called the latest deaths "horrifying and deeply tragic".
(with newswires)
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