LONDON — An overloaded boat carrying migrants capsizes before dawn Saturday in the English Channel, killing at least six people and leaving more than 50 others to be rescued, according to French authorities.
About 65 people are estimated to have boarded the boat and two people may still be lost at sea, the Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea said.
When rescuers pluck people from the waters, six are initially in critical condition. One of those, who is flown by helicopter to a Calais hospital, is pronounced dead and the other five later perish and are ferried to shore.
“This morning, a migrant boat capsized off Calais,” French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne says on social media. “My thoughts are with the victims.”
The deaths come as Britain’s ruling Conservative party has sought to stop crossings of small, often unseaworthy, boats with a variety of policies that have come under fire for failing to stem the flow of migrants.
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