A woman was ‘crushed to death’ due to overcrowding on an inflatable boat while attempting to cross the English Channel, French authorities have said.
Passengers called emergency services at around 5am on Sunday after fears that their dinghy will sink.
When a French patrol reached the scene near Calais, they discovered the woman ‘unconscious’ after ‘being crushed’ in the vessel.
She was helicoptered to a hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, but she was later pronounced dead.
‘Rescuers saw an unconscious woman on board,’ said a spokesperson for the French emergency services.
‘She was rapidly taken off and given first aid treatment, but she died on her way to hospital.’
The woman – who has not been identified – was the seventh person to have died in such circumstances in July alone.
It led to the emergency services source saying: ‘She was nowhere near the water, but succumbed to being crushed by the amount of people around her.
‘Migrants are drowning in the water, but the new phenomenon of people dying inside the boats is becoming very serious indeed.’
A total of 34 people, out of 75, were rescued from the vessel, while the rest were allowed to continue on their treacherous journey to across the Channel to reach British shores.
A spokesperson for the Maritime Prefecture said that it was during the transfer of those who wanted to get off the boat that the rescue services noticed that there was an unconscious person on board.
They added: ‘Several people still on board the boat refused assistance.
‘Given the risks of falling overboard or injury to people in the event of forced intervention, the decision was made to let the other people on this boat continue on their journey to England’.
Other small boats also left France for England on Sunday, and all are believed to have been organised by smugglers charging up to £1,000 a head for a passage.
Between July 12 and 19, six people died in three separate shipwrecks in the Channel.
Five people, including a young child, also died in April while trying to go to sea in a dinghy.
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