Migrant feared dead as two rescued after 48 hours in dinghy
A MIGRANT is missing feared drowned after two others were rescued off the Essex coast in a dinghy that set off two days earlier from northern France.
The tiny boat is understood to have left on Saturday to make the Channel crossing but was swept miles off course by powerful tides.
Two Somali nationals were rescued on Monday afternoon off the coast of Harwich. It is understood a dinghy was also recovered.
A search for the third person was launched on Monday and again yesterday by Border Force, Coastguard and RNLI but was called off at 2pm.
The search was being coordinated by the Coastguard, which sent a helicopter from Lydd, Kent, and a fixedwing aircraft.
A Coastguard aircraft, a twinengine Beech King Air, carried out a sweeping search pattern in the middle of the North Sea between Felixstowe and Ostend in Belgium.
Harwich lifeboat launched at 4.05pm on Monday, returned and then launched again at 11.35pm, before returning to shore at 8am yesterday.
The search came as UK authorities rescued or intercepted 145 people in five incidents yesterday, while French authorities intercepted five more, preventing 137 people from reaching the UK, the Home Office said.
It described the search as a “reminder of the extreme dangers of crossing the Channel” and vowed they were “determined to do everything we can to prevent people dying in the Channel”.
A spokesman said: “This afternoon an extensive search and rescue operation for a man reported to have entered the water off the Essex coast concluded.
“It is a reminder of the extreme dangers of crossing the Channel in small boats and the callous disregard for life shown by the criminal gangs.
“We are determined to do everything we can to prevent people dying in the Channel.”
Harwich and North Essex MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said: “The potential loss of life is extremely distressing.
“We must redouble our efforts to deal with the criminal gangs who are trafficking migrants, taking money from them and putting them in great peril.”
A source confirmed the two people were rescued from a “very small boat” approximately 30 miles off Harwich.
The majority of the 19,553 migrants who have crossed the Channel this year have been detected close to the narrow 21-mile Strait of Dover, which is the busiest shipping lane in the world. But smugglers will attempt to force migrants into Harwich in larger fishing vessels.
A 27-year-old Eritrean man died in August this year after a boat carrying 36 people began to sink off the coast of France.
Bullets
And in October last year a family died attempting to cross from Calais to the UK just off Dunkirk.
Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, nine, and Armin, six, were all from Iran.
The body of their 15-month-old baby Artin was found near Karmøy in south-west Norway on New Year’s
Day.They made the trip through the icy waters because they were worried about being in Calais during the winter.
Earlier this month, French police opened fire on a dinghy of migrants with potentially lethal rubber bullets to prevent their illegal boat from crossing the Channel.
The attack, the first known case of gun tactics to halt a migrant boat launch, prompted an investigation by French national police authorities.
The incident marks a major ramping up of tensions on the beaches, as gendarmerie night patrols battle to control the fleet of boats headed for Britain.