OThe men were detained on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration and entering the United Kingdom illegally, according to the BBC.
Five migrants, including a child, died on Tuesday in an attempt to cross the English Channel from France to England, in a small overcrowded boat, with authorities saying today that some died of suffocation while still inside the vessel.
The deaths occurred when a boat, whose maximum recommended capacity was 20 people, but which carried 112attempted to cross what is one of the busiest maritime migration routes in the world.
Panic gripped the passengers not far off the coast of Wimereux in northern France when the boat hit a sandbank, causing several people to stand up and throw the boat off balance.
Although some of the five victims – a four-year-old girl, a woman and three men – drowned, others were suffocated and stepped on “as they struggled to free themselves”, said an investigator, quoted by the MailOnline newspaper.
Rescue teams rescued 49 people, four of whom were hospitalized, but the others remained on the boat, determined to reach the UK.
“I’ve never seen a boat so overcrowded”admitted the mayor of Pas-de-Calais (the French side of the English Channel), Jacques Billant, adding that “traffickers [de migrantes] they usually fill the boats with a maximum of 50 people”.
According to information provided by the BBC, citing a British prosecutor, the boat was too full because “around 40 to 50 migrants left the forest and forced their way in, crushing many people who were already on board”.
Most of the migrants on board paid smugglers the equivalent of 1,160 euros for the journey.
The head of the French municipality of Wimereux blamed the United Kingdom for the tragedy, arguing that the accident happened because the English “welcome migrants”.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed, however, that what happened in the English Channel on Tuesday, one of several incidents that led to the deaths of 14 migrants bound for the UK since the beginning of the year, “evidence the need to dissuade people from making the trip.”
According to British authorities, around 29,437 of the 67,337 asylum applications submitted last year to the United Kingdom arrived in the country in small, unfit and often overcrowded boats.
Read Also: Amnesty highlights gender-based violence and violence against migrants in Portugal
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