A 40-year-old man died on Sunday trying to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK, reports The Guardian.
According to the prefecture in Calais, the man was of Indian heritage and had a cardiac arrest after the boat he was in with about 50 other men, women and children deflated minutes after leaving the French shore.
Everyone swam back to the shore but he collapsed and resuscitation attempts by emergency services on the beach failed to revive him.
The incident happened at about 5.30am local time (0430 GMT) off the coast of the town of Tardinghen.
It brings the death toll this year among people crossing the Channel to 57, the deadliest year so far for Channel crossings. However, this does not seem to have deterred people from attempting the journey.
As of Saturday the number of people who have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year has exceeded the total who arrived in the whole of 2023, according to figures published by the Home Office.
So far this year 29,642 people have made the trip, compared with 29,437 last year. It is unlikely that the 2022 total of 45,755 people who arrived in small boats will be exceeded by the end of December 2024. On Saturday 64 people crossed the Channel in one boat.