During the night of Tuesday July 5 to Wednesday July 6, several makeshift boats which were starting a crossing of the English Channel found themselves in difficulty in the Strait of Pas-de-Calais. The emergency services intervened at least five times to rescue a total of 166 migrants.
A first intervention took place off the Touquet for a boat carrying 47 people. Off Berk, then 33 migrants were rescued, then 21 in the Calais sector. Each time, their boat was in difficulty.
An ocean buoy also took part in the operation, picking up 43 shipwrecked people on board off Hardelot. A last boat is the subject of an intervention with 22 people on board, one of whom was very weakhad to be evacuated by helicopter to the hospital.
A network of smugglers dismantled
This large-scale rescue operation comes as a large network of smugglers has just been dismantled by 5 European countries, including France. 39 people, including 9 in France, were arrested after several months of investigation. They are suspected of being part of an Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling organization which has smuggled up to 10,000 migrants from France to the UK over the past 12 to 18 months.