Child among three killed off French coast in Channel crossing attempt

Three people, including a child, have died off the coast of northern France after a dinghy carrying migrants toward the United Kingdom ran into difficulty in the English Channel, French authorities said Sunday.

According to France's maritime police, a distress call came from an inflatable boat carrying 105 people that encountered trouble despite calm sea conditions. The incident took place near Wissant, a coastal village in northern France, officials said.

French maritime authorities described the vessel as a "taxi boat," a term used for dinghies that approach the shoreline to collect migrants waiting in shallow water before heading out to open sea. Officials said the boat itself did not sink, but everyone aboard ultimately needed rescue and was taken into care.

The news agency AFP reported that a rescue vessel reached the port of Calais by mid-morning and began bringing ashore those who had been pulled from the water.

The English Channel remains one of the busiest and most hazardous shipping routes in the world, and crossings by small boat have become an increasingly deadly feature of migration into Britain. AFP's tally of French and British official figures shows at least 29 migrants died attempting the crossing last year, while more than 41,000 people made the journey during that period.

The persistence of Channel crossings has become a highly charged political issue in the UK, drawn into wider debates over immigration policy. Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party, is among the politicians who have characterized the situation as a crisis, and anti-immigration activists have organized demonstrations, some drawing hundreds of participants, around the issue.

Successive UK governments have pledged to curb the crossings. In April, France and Britain signed a bilateral agreement aimed at intensifying joint efforts to prevent people from making the journey, including additional personnel, surveillance technology and intelligence-sharing between the two countries, according to Al Jazeera.

Tensions over how to handle the crossings resurfaced last month when Reform UK proposed deploying naval vessels to intercept boats at sea and return asylum seekers to France. The idea drew a sharp rebuke from the French Interior Ministry, which argued that such action would violate international law, according to Al Jazeera.

French authorities have not released further details on the identities of those who died or the nationalities of the passengers aboard the dinghy. Efforts by French and British officials to manage the flow of crossings and prevent further deaths in the Channel continue amid ongoing diplomatic friction between the two governments.