 Five people who drowned after their boat deflated in the Channel near Calais were not given life jackets by smugglers, rescuers said. At least 59 asylum seekers – many of them from Afghanistan – were rescued from the water by French and British coastguards on Saturday, but two remain missing. Régis Holy, skipper of the Notre-Dame du Brisban lifeboat, said he helped retrieve the bodies of five out of the six victims. He confirmed that none were wearing life jackets, and that their inflatable dinghy was 'punctured'. Paramedics assist a man rescued at sea (Picture: AFP) 'You do not get used to it. Handling a body is difficult, it is heavy, the clothes are wet,' he told Liberation newspaper. The six people who died in the latest tragedy in the Channel were all Afghan men thought to be in their 30s. Their vessel left northern France in the early hours of Saturday morning with no emergency equipment. Smugglers packed them into one of a number of inflatable dinghies, charging all around £1,000 for the passage to English shores, according to charities. Regis Holy, the French captain of the rescue boat 'Notre Dame du Risban' (Picture: AFP) The aim was to stretch police resources across a number of beaches, ensuring that as many people as possible got to Britain. As search for survivors continues, Hervé Berville, the French minister for the sea, explained how smugglers are now 'saturating' the coast with people who want to get to Britain. 'There were a lot of people on the water last night, with a fairly rough sea,' he said during a visit to Calais this weekend. 'The smugglers have a strategy of saturating the coast – they trigger simultaneous crossings between Dunkirk and Boulogne, to occupy the police.' An RNLI lifeboat brings in a group of migrants into Dover Port that were found crossing the English Channel on August 10 (Picture: Getty) He described the smugglers as 'criminals, wh){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
Five people who drowned after their boat deflated in the Channel near Calais were not given life jackets by smugglers, rescuers said.
At least 59 asylum seekers – many of them from Afghanistan – were rescued from the water by French and British coastguards on Saturday, but two remain missing.
Regis Holy, skipper of the Notre-Dame du Brisban lifeboat, said he helped retrieve the bodies of five out of the six victims.
He confirmed that none were wearing life jackets, and that their inflatable dinghy was ‘punctured’.