Twenty-six of the twenty-seven migrants who drowned on November 24 in the English Channel were identified in France, including a child and a teenager, French authorities announced Tuesday (December 14th).
They are sixteen Iraqi Kurds, four Afghans, three Ethiopians, one Somali, as well as an Iranian and an Egyptian.
A statement from the Paris prosecutor specifies that among the deceased, there are 17 men aged 19 to 26, seven women aged 22 to 46, as well as a 16-year-old teenager and a seven-year-old child.
The migrants had taken place in an inflatable boat on November 24 at Loon-Plage, near Grande-Synthe (North), to reach the English coast.
Only two men had been rescued, an Iraqi Kurd and a Sudanese, according to the Interior Ministry.
According to one person's testimony, 33 people were on board when the smugglers counted them.
Twenty-six of the twenty-seven bodies found were identified "formally" thanks to the work of the criminal research institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) and the Lille hospital center, the prosecutor announced on Tuesday in a statement. from Paris, Laure Beccuau.
"No pregnant woman has been identified among the victims" and a person has not been identified to date, "she said.
This shipwreck is the deadliest since the crossings of the Channel to reach the English coasts have developed.
>> To read also: Maryam, 24, first identified victim of the sinking of migrants in the Channel
Lost dreams
Abdul Saboor, an Afghan photojournalist, told AFP that he had met the Iraqi Kurdish family the week before the sinking, after the expulsion from their camp in Grande-Synthe.
"Tired", the mother "wanted to find water", he testifies.
In the photos taken that day, we see her smile under a sad look, her head covered with a tight hood.
In another, two of her children are warming themselves around a pallet fire.
Abdul Saboor remembers that they insisted on giving him crisps, when they had next to nothing.
In the UK, "the boy wanted to be a hairdresser, the (older) girl a plastic arts teacher" and they asked "about the weather in England. They were very friendly, very endearing," he says. he.
"Their dreams will remain forever lost between the two borders", he wrote in caption of his photos on Twitter.
When the tragedy was announced, Afghan families went to the Lille forensic institute to identify relatives whose deaths they feared at sea.
One of the victims, Hussein, a 24-year-old Afghan, had arrived a few days before the tragedy at the home of his cousin Amanullah Omakhil, 18, in Dunkirk.
The two had been close since taking the road to exile together in 2016, after a childhood spent on the Pakistani border.
When Hussein announced to try his luck for England on November 23 by boat, Amanullah did not try to restrain him: "It was his choice. He was my oldest, I could not tell him 'don't do this, do not do that '", he told AFP in French in front of the forensic institute.
Hussein aspired to a "good life", loved walking and seeing landscapes ", according to his young cousin.
The investigation of the National Jurisdiction against Organized Crime (Junalco) must, in particular, determine the conditions of this sinking which remain unclear.
Questions arise about the calls that the migrants would have made to the French and English authorities, when their makeshift boat began to sink, according to the testimony of a survivor with the Iraqi Kurdish channel Rudaw.
The Manche maritime prefecture had ruled out that the appeal of migrants in difficulty was not dealt with.
Five people suspected of being smugglers were arrested, according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, but unrelated to the facts of November 24.
This shipwreck caused a stir in Europe and rekindled tensions between France and the United Kingdom.
With AFP
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