Migrants trying to illegally cross the English Channel in a small boat refused rescue by the French coastguard so they could be collected by UK authorities instead, according to reports.
The small dinghy with 15 Iranian men on board was spotted by French and British sea patrols after making it about halfway across the English Channel. After the French patrol vessel approached their boat, the Iranians became aggressive, firing flares up and yelling that they didn’t want to be taken back to France, The Telegraph reports.
Because the boat had technically crossed into British territorial waters, the group of men was eventually brought back to British shores by the UK Border Force.
The incident, which occurred at around 6:45 am on Sunday, was seen by a group of passengers on a ferry traveling across the channel.
“The dinghy was very low in the water and the migrants were firing flares asking to be rescued,” one witness said.
“I looked out of the window and saw this tiny orange boat. You could tell it was a migrant dinghy. They were about two miles from the coast of Britain. It was a very cold night, the water was quite choppy, so they must have been getting very wet.”
“The ferry kept a safe distance from the dingy but kept circling until a coastguard helicopter came over and then we saw two coastguard boats coming out of the port of Dover.”
Close to 1,500 migrants have successfully made their way to the UK from across the channel in 2019.
Last year, just 297 migrants were caught attempting to cross the Channel. Only 100 have been returned to continental Europe.
In a statement, the Home Office confirmed the incident, saying: “The people who facilitate this are ruthless and do not care about the risk to life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment