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Six people were killed when a boat carrying migrants heading to Britain sank in the Channel early Saturday, French maritime officials said, as a search continued to find those still missing.

A spokeswoman from the French coastal authority Premar said between five and 10 passengers were still missing, while 55 had been rescued.

Three French ships, a helicopter and a plane have been mobilised to search the area off Sangatte in northern France, along with two British ships.

The local prosecutor said that the first victim was a man aged between 25 and 30 years old of Afghan origin, who had been evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Calais but later died.

Five other people in a critical condition were taken to Calais on a lifeboat but declared dead on the ship's arrival, said the Premar spokesperson.

The boat capsized around 2 am local time (0000 GMT) off the northern coast of France, according to the prosecutor.

An AFP reporter in Calais saw some of those rescued disembarking from a patrol boat with emergency services on site.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne wrote on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, that her "thoughts go out to the victims" as she praised the efforts of the rescue teams.

Perilous crossing

More than 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording the arrivals in 2018, official figures revealed on Friday.

French authorities have stepped up patrols and other deterrent measures after London agreed in March to send Paris hundreds of millions of euros annually towards the effort.

The route across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes has repeatedly proved perilous, with several capsizings and scores of migrants drowning in the waters over the last decade.

In recent days there have been several attempts to cross the Channel in boats after weather conditions improved.

Overnight Thursday, Premar reported that 116 migrants had been rescued including children, on three separate boats.

Some 755 migrants were detected on Thursday on 14 small boats headed for England's southern coast, the UK interior ministry statistics showed, the highest tally on a single day this year.

Those boats brought the number of arrivals so far this year to nearly 16,000.

Five migrants died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross over to Britain from France last year.

In November 2021, 27 migrants died when a boat capsized in the Channel.

Activists have claimed that the UK government's alleged anti-immigrant policy makes dangerous channel crossings more likely, leaving migrants stranded without any safe routes to the UK.Ìý