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People 'stomped' to death in migrant boat crush, says survivor who saw son die

The Kurdish migrant says the boat was massively overloaded and the victims did not drown, but died in an on-board crush.

Monday 16 September 2024 16:17, UK

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A man has said his son and seven others died after being "stomped on" in a packed migrant boat as people became trapped just minutes into the journey.

Kameran Mohammad told Sky News his son, Dyari, was among at least eight killed in Sunday's incident in the Channel .

A 10-month-old baby with hypothermia was taken to hospital with five others, as 51 people were rescued.

Mr Mohammad said they boarded at night but - like many crossings - the boat was packed with far too many people.

"When we boarded, within five minutes we found ourselves at the feet of other passengers... We carried on for around half an hour," he said.

"There was water in the boat but I am not sure if there was a hole in the boat or it was the water from the waves."

Mr Mohammad described a situation that rapidly deteriorated for those on board - who he said included Kurds, Vietnamese, East Africans, Afghans and Persians.

"I was aware that my son was screaming but we could not move because we were under the people's feet," he said.

"It was not just us, there were other passengers under people's feet. Those eight people who died were stomped on and did not drown."

Mr Mohammad said the crossing was abandoned after the crush and the boat tried to return to France.

However, officials said the boat "tore apart on the rocks" off Ambleteuse in the Pas-de-Calais region - and that only one in six people on board had a life jacket.

"I was unconscious and they poured water in my face to come round," said Mr Mohammad.

"They removed eight bodies and I saw one of them was my son. He died under people's feet."

Pictures of the wreck show several black rubber rings that appear to be children's toys and French authorities have not yet confirmed how the migrants died.

Mr Mohammed said there were 24 people in his group and that he was one of four Kurds.

However, he told Sky News he met someone in hospital who said they were part of another group of 68 on the same boat - suggesting around 90 people were on board.

"If there were 50 people, it would be fine," he said. "Half of the passengers were at the feet of other passengers here."

He said he had been told the boat was 9m (29ft) long.

The deaths come less than two weeks after at least 12 people, including 10 women and girls, died after another boat tore apart in the Channel.

Some 801 people migrants in 14 boats made it to the UK on Saturday - the second-highest this year - and 292 people in six boats crossed on Sunday.

French authorities also rescued about 200 people off the coast of Calais over a 24-hour period between Friday and Saturday night.

At least 45 people have died in Channel crossings this year.

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More than 21,000 people arrived in the UK in small boats between January and September, according to government figures.

Labour has pledged to tackle the migrant crisis by focussing on the criminal gangs behind the operation.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is in Italy today to meet his counterpart, Giorgia Meloni , and has promised "a new era" of cooperation to dismantle the people smuggling networks.

Italy has experienced a 60% drop in illegal migration across the Mediterranean Sea in the past year and has recently signed a controversial deal with neighbouring Albania.

Sir Keir said he was "interested" in how the arrangement worked but he's more interested in "work around organised immigration crime, the smuggling, the trafficking gangs, because that's delivering results straight away".

The government has said it will increase deportation flights and use money saved from the Tories' Rwanda scheme to help tackle the crossings.

Related Topics

• Migrant Crisis
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UK leader Starmer seeks to learn from Meloni's tough migration policies at meeting in Rome

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has met with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in Rome

ROME -- U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday praised the migration policies of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni as the center-left British leader aimed to learn how her nationalist conservative government has made “remarkable progress” in reducing the number of migrants reaching Italy's shores by boat .

The meeting in Rome between the two leaders came after at least eight seaborne migrants died off the French coast over the weekend trying to cross the English Channel.

The Labour Party prime minister isn't a natural ally of Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party. But migration has climbed the U.K. political agenda, and Starmer hopes Italy's tough approach can help him stop people fleeing war and poverty trying to cross the channel in flimsy, overcrowded boats.

More than 22,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing from France so far this year, a slight increase from the same period in 2023. Several dozen people have perished in their attempts, including the eight killed when a boat carrying about 60 people ran aground on rocks late Saturday.

The number of migrants arriving in Italy by boat in the first half of this year was down 60% from 2023, according to the country’s Interior Ministry, and migration formed the core of the leaders' talks at the Villa Doria Pamphilj, a 17th-century mansion set in a large park not far from the Vatican.

At a joint news conference, Starmer said Italy had made “remarkable progress" by cracking down on smuggling gangs and "working with countries along migration routes as equals.”

Meloni pledged a crackdown on migration after taking office in 2022, aiming to deter would-be refugees from paying smugglers to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. Her government has signed deals with individual African countries including Tunisia to block departures, imposed limits on the work of humanitarian rescue ships, cracked down on traffickers and taken measures to deter people from setting off.

Italy also has signed a deal with Albania under which some adult male migrants rescued at sea while trying to reach Italy would be taken instead to Albania while their asylum claims are processed.

Meloni said Starmer had expressed interest in “new solutions” such as the Albania deal, and said she had filled him in. She said the processing centers in Albania, which had been due to open in August , would likely be up and running in a few weeks and that it was best to delay the opening until they were ready since the “eyes of the world” would be on them.

Starmer confirmed the two leaders had discussed the Albania model, but stressed that “we don't know the outcome of it.”

Starmer wants to learn from Italy’s mix of tough enforcement and international cooperation, though Italy's approach has been criticized by refugee groups and others alarmed by Europe’s increasingly strict asylum rules , growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants.

The leader of Italy's right-wing League, Matteo Salvini , who is deputy prime minister in Meloni's government, has been accused by prosecutors of alleged kidnapping for his decision to prevent a rescue ship carrying more than 100 migrants from landing in Italy when he was interior minister in 2019.

Meloni dismissed as “completely groundless” allegations that Italian plans like the Albania agreement risked violating migrants' rights, saying they were covered by Italian legislation.

Starmer said he had no qualms about working with Meloni's government.

“Italy is an ally,” he told reporters traveling with him to Rome. “I think the more we can collaborate and cooperate with our partners on a shared challenge, the better.”

Starmer also toured Italy’s National Coordination Center for Immigration with newly appointed U.K. Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt. The government says Hewitt, a former head of Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, will work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.K. and across Europe to tackle people-smuggling networks.

Before the trip, Starmer said there would be “no more gimmicks” — a reference to the previous Conservative government’s scuttled plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda , with no chance of returning to the U.K. even if their refugee claims were successful.

The Conservatives said the deportation plan would act as a deterrent, but refugee and human rights groups called it unethical, judges ruled it illegal and Starmer scrapped it soon after being elected in July .

“We’ve moved from a government of gimmicks to a government of pragmatism," he said in Rome.

Support for Ukraine was also on the agenda for the trip, part of Starmer’s effort to reset relations with European neighbors after Britain’s acrimonious 2020 departure from the European Union.

Unlike some politicians on the European right, Meloni is a staunch supporter of Ukraine . Starmer met her after returning from Washington, where he and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed Ukraine’s plea to use Western-supplied missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pressing allies to allow his forces to use Western weapons to target air bases and launch sites inside Russia as Moscow steps up assaults on Ukraine’s electricity grid and utilities before winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that would mean NATO countries “are at war with Russia.”

So far, the U.S. hasn't announced a change to its policy of allowing Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Meloni restated that Italian law precludes such use of Italian weaponry for offensive attacks against Russia. She said that Italy's main contribution would continue to be in protecting Ukrainian civilians with anti-air defense systems.

Starmer said that he wouldn't reveal details of “ongoing discussions,” but that Kyiv's allies were united in face of Russia's threats.

“We’ve all been clear. Russia started this war," he said. "It’s a war of aggression. It’s unlawful. Russia could and should end it, and that’s where responsibility lies. And so I think it’s really important to be robust about this.”

Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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News | Politics

Starmer hails Italy success targeting 'vile' human trafficking trade across the Med at source in North Africa

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Sir Keir Starmer has hailed Italy's "dramatic" reduction in migrants risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean to reach the southern European country.

The Prime Minister stressed that the fall of around two thirds in the number of migrants embarking on this sea route looks to be the result of "upstream" work.

Sir Keir, who had flown to Rome for talks with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, also did not rule out an Italian-style asylum claims’ processing system in Albania.

Asked how the UK could replicate Italy's Albania deal, the Prime Minister told broadcasters in Rome: "I'm here to have discussions, here at this co-ordination centre and with the Prime Minister (Giorgia Meloni) about how we deal with unlawful migration.

"Here there's been some quite dramatic reductions. So I want to understand how that came about.

"It looks as though that's down to the upstream work that's been done in some of the countries where people are coming from."

He added: "I've long believed, by the way, that prevention and stopping people traveling in the first place is one of the best ways to deal with this particular issue.

"So I am very interested to know how that upstream work went, looking, of course, at other schemes, looking forward to my bilateral with the prime minister this afternoon, but we've already got a shared intent to work together on this trade, this vile trade, of pushing people across borders."

Earlier, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had confirmed that Britain is looking at an Italian-style asylum claims’ processing scheme in Albania, as more migrants are dying in desperate attempts to cross the Channel to reach Britain.

The Home Secretary stressed that the focus of the Government’s actions was currently on smashing the criminal gangs behind the human trafficking trade.

But she also confirmed that the UK and Italy are seeking to co-operate on multiple fronts.

Ms Cooper told BBC Breakfast: "There are four different things that the Italians are doing that we're interested in.

"The first is the work that they are doing around organised immigration crime. That's the work that we are substantially gearing up, where we will be doing a huge technology upgrade as well, and where we want to work with Italy, with Germany, with other European countries, with France as well.

"The second thing they're doing is they're working with other countries upstream to prevent people leaving North Africa in the first place...working with Tunisia, we think we should be part of those international co-operations as well.

"The third thing they're doing is major returns. So they're speeding up returns for those who don't have a right to be there. We've been doing that through the summer as well, so we've had a substantial increase in returns for people who don't have a right to be in the UK, because the rules need to be respected and enforced.

"The fourth thing they're doing is the Albania programme, but that hasn't started yet, so we'll need to see what that does. It's very different from the Rwanda partnership that the UK government had, and we'll have to see how that plays out."

But Ms Cooper stressed that Italy's planned third-country processing deal with Albania is "very, very different" from the previous UK government's Rwanda scheme.

The Home Secretary told Good Morning Britain: "It's very, very different. So the arrangement that they have in place - and look, it's not working yet, so we don't know how it will play out - but it is a very, very different approach.

"First of all, this is Italian processing taking place in Albania. It has UNHCR oversight, so it is being monitored to make sure that it meets international standards.

"It's being done in cooperation between those two countries, and what they're actually doing is looking at those people who arrive in Italy, who have come from predominantly safe countries, and they're using it as a way to try and fast-track decisions and returns.

"Now we think there is another way we can fast-track decisions and returns for people who arrive from predominantly safer countries.

"We should be fast-tracking those cases. We should be making sure you don't have people spending years in the asylum system, which ends up being hugely costly, hugely chaotic. That's the system we've inherited."

Ms Cooper also told how former Met Police chief Martin Hewitt is to play a key role leading Britain’s fight to make migration crime gangs behind cross- Channel crossings “pay the price” for the impact of their human trafficking trade, including rising fatalities.

Ahead of the talks with Ms Meloni, Sir Keir said Mr Hewitt, a former chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and ex-Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, would run a new Border Security Command which would be empowered to lead joint investigations with other countries.

Mr Hewitt also oversaw the UK’s enforcement of lockdown laws during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking on Monday morning, Ms Cooper said: “Martin Hewitt who was a former police chief and former army officer has huge experience around law enforcement.

“He will lead the new Border Security Command which is bringing together Border Force , the National Crime Agency, police forces, intelligence and security agencies, but also crucially working with European law enforcement in order to go after the criminal gangs and to make sure that they pay the price.

“They are getting away with this at the moment.

“It’s deeply damaging.”

On Sunday, French authorities said eight people had died trying to cross the Channel after their boat got into difficulty, bringing the death toll in attempted crossings to 46 since the start of the year.

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