A pregnant woman and several children were among 12 people killed after a boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized off the coast of France in the English Channel.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said most of the dead were women, adding that two people were still missing.
More than 50 people have been rescued off Cape Gris-Nez, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, the French coastguard said. Two people are said to be in a critical condition.
The boat was overloaded and had fewer than eight people wearing life jackets, Darmanin said.
The disaster is the deadliest in the English Channel this year.
A source said a Syrian smuggler may have been involved.
Local prosecutor Guirec Le Bras said officials believed the victims were “mostly of Eritrean origin” although they had not yet been able to “determine their exact nationality”.
Before the incident on Tuesday, 30 people died crossing the English Channel in 2024 – the highest number in any year since 2021, when 45 deaths were recorded, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Mr Darmanin said French authorities had stopped 60% of small boat departures. But traffickers were cramming up to 70 people onto boats that were meant to carry 30 to 40 – leading to more deadly shipwrecks.
He urged Britain and the EU to agree a “migration pact” to limit small boat traffic.
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the incident as “horrific and deeply tragic”.
“The gangs behind this brutal and horrifying human trafficking operation have been cramming more and more people onto increasingly unsafe small boats and taking them across the Channel even in very bad weather conditions,” she said.
She added that efforts to “dismantle these dangerous and criminal smuggling gangs and strengthen border security are critically important and must be undertaken swiftly”.
“These tragedies are happening much more frequently,” said Steve Smith, chief executive of Care4Calais, a charity set up to support migrants in Calais.
“Every political leader, on both sides of the Channel, needs to be asked: ‘How many more lives must be lost before these avoidable tragedies end?’”
The French coast guard said helicopters, navy ships and fishing boats were involved in the rescue operation.
The number of people making the dangerous crossing of the English Channel in small boats has increased, with more than 135,000 people reaching the UK by this route since 2018.
More than 21,000 people have crossed the English Channel this year.
That’s up from the same period last year but down from 2022. The number of people crossing the border in 2022 — 45,755 — was the highest since the first data was collected in 2018.
Both the Labour Party and the previous Conservative government pledged to tackle the issue.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has scrapped the previous Conservative government’s plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was first announced in 2022 but never implemented.
Sir Keir has vowed to take tougher measures to “crush” the people-trafficking gangs responsible.
Downing Street said it had taken action to target criminal gangs by recruiting more officers to the National Crime Agency and establishing the government’s Border Security Command.
But critics say the government should do more to provide safe routes for asylum seekers.
“No amount of ‘gang busting’ measures and government rhetoric can stop these tragedies from happening again and again if the needs of those exploited by these gangs are not addressed,” Amnesty International UK said on Tuesday.
