Three migrants die as dinghy capsizes off Calais en route to UK

A 10-year-old boy and two women believed to be in their 30s, of Eritrean nationality, died in a stampede on a boat carrying one hundred and five people across the English Channel on September 28, 2026. The overcrowded craft had put out from Blériot Plage, Sangatte, around 5:15am that Monday. Around 8:00am the passengers called for help. Six kilometers of water already separated them from the French coast.

The region’s prefecture stated the fact in one line: “A shipwreck involving a water taxi occurred today off the coast of Wissant.” Sangatte lies near Calais, some thirty-five kilometers from Dover. Wissant is the coastal village farther south where the trouble was fixed. The craft was a taxi-boat, also called a water taxi or mega-dinghy—the large inflatable type now standard for these attempts. These vessels come in from shallow water off the beaches so that people can wade out and climb on.

Six rescue boats closed on the position together with a French maritime rescue vessel. The survivors went aboard the maritime vessel. Three passengers had already received medical care on the craft itself. An emergency medical team, flown out by helicopter, reached them next and declared those three dead at the scene. The French Maritime Prefecture of the Channel and the North Sea set the order down: medical attention onboard first, death confirmed only after the helicopter team arrived.

A spokesman for French authorities, cited by LBC, gave a provisional total of three deaths and many more injured. One hundred and two of the one hundred and five people aboard were rescued. The provisional figures supplied no names and no cause. The Pas-de-Calais prefecture press release, cited by InfoMigrants French, gave both. “According to initial findings of the investigation, it appears that the deaths were caused by a stampede.” The release went on to say that the precise circumstances of the tragedy would need to be established by the judicial investigation that had been launched. The deaths had occurred on board the heavily overcrowded boat itself. The prefecture added: “The situation is being assessed and remains subject to change. State services and rescue teams are fully mobilised.” The child had reportedly been traveling with his mother and siblings.

Three other migrants died in similar taxi-boat departures the previous week—two at Hardelot and one at Camiers. Smugglers had shaped the traffic around vessels that moved along the coast, gathering groups from successive beaches before the open run. The craft themselves had enlarged season by season. Average loads rose from twenty-six people in 2021 to sixty-five by early 2026, turning the earlier boats into the mega-dinghies now in regular use.

Tony Smith, former head of the Border Force, set the longer shift in plain terms. In his years the work had concentrated on people hidden in lorries, trains and ferries; arrivals by sea barely registered. “I think the reason people shifted to the boats was because we'd done quite well in stopping them coming in by other routes.”

By late September 2026 successful Channel crossings stood at 18,609. That figure was about 42 percent lower than the 32,188 people who had crossed in the same period of 2025. Tallies that put the year’s total above 18,600 described a drop of roughly 40 percent. Small-boat arrivals sat at a seven-year low. The decline came after July 2025, when the United Kingdom and France agreed on a “one in, one out” returns deal designed as a deterrent to stop boats from crossing the Channel.

The year’s deaths were counted on a separate ledger and the numbers did not fall in step. Pas-de-Calais prefecture reported 20 migrant deaths so far in 2026, mostly from drownings and other causes during attempted crossings but also including some killed in traffic accidents, compared with 21 over the same months of 2025. An AFP tally reached at least 22. InfoMigrants estimated 24, noting that such estimates vary because not all departures are known about or monitored. Before the Monday incident the Telegraph had listed 19. Three further deaths that morning raised every total.

Nine of the 102 people taken off the boat required medical treatment when they arrived in the port of Calais. Later that morning the survivors disembarked from the French maritime rescue vessel there. An AFP correspondent at the scene reported seeing several people, including children, wrapped in emergency blankets. Some were moved on stretchers. Others sat in wheelchairs. The judicial inquiry into the stampede continued while the transfer finished.