THE DEADLY

CALLOUS people traffickers are offering €1,000 “death discounts” to tempt migrants still desperate to reach the UK despite at least 27 dying in the Channel last week.

Smugglers had been demanding €3,000 (£2,545) per person for the treacherous journey in flimsy dinghies.

It is feared the price cut will encourage yet more to attempt the 21-mile trip, made even more dangerous by deteriorating weather.

Victims of last week’s disaster who remain unidentified are likely to be buried in basic graves labelled ‘Monsieur or Madame X’, sources say.

But the grim ending for so many has not deterred others continuing their desperate efforts to reach the UK.

“We know about the people who died but we have no choice,” said IraqiKurd Hassan Ahmed at the sprawling Grand-Synthe camp near Dunkirk.

“I was told the price has come down because of people dying, €2,000.”

The 22-year-old added: “It is still expensive – but I will try and get on a boat one day, one week.”

Hassan, who says he spent €2,500 just to reach the French coast, said migrants making the crossing receive a message before they embark telling them where their dinghy has been hidden in miles of sand dunes.

A second message gives the location of an outboard motor and a pump with which to inflate the boat.

He said the migrants deal with the traffickers via an Eastern European go-between known only as Akim.

Hassan is among 500 living in squalid conditions near old rail tracks, and the hopeful keep on coming.

Nine members of the Al-Kahzraji family – including children aged four, 10 and 12 – pitched tents yesterday.

Mum Shadan said the family fled fighting in Iraqi Kurdistan.

After spending several years in Germany she claims the authorities there refused them papers to remain.

Older son Danyal, 19, said they had been told it will cost €20,000 to get them all to the UK

As his little brother and sister Havel and Nur played on the litterstrewn tracks, he said: “We want a life in Great Britain. We want to live there and work there.”

He said they knew many people had died making the crossing this week.

But it was a risk worth taking as they could not return to Kurdistan.

At least 17 men, seven women – including one who was pregnant – and three children are confirmed dead. But detectives from France’s Organised Crime squad believe empty life jackets suggest more drowned.

Bodies that cannot be identified are likely to join dozens buried in anonymous graves in Calais. We saw three such graves at Cimetière Sud, in an area a groundsman said is “for migrants, the poor and destitute”.

Each cement slab had a sign saying “Monsieur X” and the year of death.

At another cemetery – Cimetière Nord – a groundsman pointed out more plots. Many are little more than mounds of mud and a cross. Some 20 plots are marked out for more burials.

Campaigners despair over the

“undignified” end and the fact it means victims’ families may never even receive confirmation of their death. Nathanaël Caillaux, of Catholic charity Secours Catholique Calais Accueil Social, said: “It’s more than a few. It is very sad.”

Non-profit organisation Groupe Décès has called on French authorities to identify and find family members to arrange repatriation. The group usually tries this itself, but Mr Caillaux said “27 people is impossible and this should be the work of the state”.

Police have interviewed the only two survivors of Wednesday’s tragedy after they were released from hospital.

The men – an Iraqi Kurd identified as Mohammed Khalid and a Somalian named as Omar, who are in their 20s – told of “mass panic” as the boat deflated and sank into the sea. An investigating source said authorities fear there may be more dead as empty lifejackets were found in the sea.

“People smugglers don’t provide extra lifejackets, so the assumption is there will still be bodies,” he said.

Soaking bank notes found in some of victims’ clothes helped confirm the dead include a Kurdish woman and man from Syria, two Yemeni men, an Iranian Kurd and two Iraqis.

Kurd Maryam Nuri Hamdamin, 24, who messaged her fiancé in the UK after the boat got into trouble, was the first victim officially named.

And Mohammad Aziz, 31, is feared drowned after he phoned a pal to say: “The engine isn’t powerful enough – I don’t know if we’re going to make it.”

Fears are also growing for four Afghan youngsters. Riaz Mohammed, 12, Share Mohammed, 17, and two other teens, Palowan, 16, and Shinai, 15, were among those trying to cross.

One charity worker said it was hard to know who had died and who had “made it” from any crossing as UK authorities confiscate the mobile phones of anybody they find.

But more are waiting to make the journey under the ruthless smugglers, because life is so miserable here and in the places they came from.

Mohammed Hutamzadth, 40, who has made four failed bids to reach the UK, lives in sheltered accommodation after travelling from Iran five years ago. He keeps a gun for protection. He said: “Living is very dangerous, there is a sort of mafia who control everything. In Calais, money is God.

“As long as I have money I will easily find someone who will take me in a boat. Of course it is dangerous. But my whole life has become dangerous.”

To underline his point, evidence of crossings littered the beach at Wimereux, near Boulogne, yesterday.

A water scoop cut out of a petrol can and bits of what looked like jacket straps were among the detritus.

Charity volunteer Phoebe Westwood, 32, from Bristol says the only way to end the chaos – and deaths – is to provide a “safe or legal route” and process applications properly.

“The week before the shipwreck 200 people were rescued from the sea,” she said. “It’s tragedy after tragedy.”