Eight migrants have died while trying to cross the English Channel overnight.

The French maritime prefecture for the English Channel and the North Sea said 53 migrants were on board a boat which got into difficulty off the coast of Ambleteuse in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France.

A rescue operation was launched but eight people were confirmed dead, the prefecture said in a statement.

Jacques Billant, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais, told French media on Sunday that six people were taken to hospital “in relative emergency,” including a 10-month-old baby with hypothermia.

He said the boat “quickly” got into trouble after it set off, and appears to have crashed into rocks.

He added that the eight who died were all adult men.

Survivors of the accident come from Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Iran, he added.

A UK Government spokesperson said French authorities are leading the investigation.

Nobody risks their life travelling across the Channel in a small boat unless they feel they have no other choice

“We can confirm there has been an incident in the Channel involving a small boat in French waters,” the spokesperson said.

“French authorities are leading the response and investigation. We will not be commenting further at this stage.”

British Red Cross said the deaths were “tragic”, as the charity organisation called for more safe crossing routes for migrants.

“Nobody risks their life travelling across the Channel in a small boat unless they feel they have no other choice,” the director for refugee support, Alex Fraser, said.

“More safe routes are urgently needed to help prevent people from taking dangerous journeys to reach the UK.”

It comes less than two weeks after 12 migrants died when their boat sank trying to cross the Channel.

A pregnant woman and six children were among those killed in the incident on September 3, with up to 65 people rescued off the coast of Cap Gris-Nez.

More than 30 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year.

Before this month, the French coastguard had recorded at least 19 Channel crossing deaths in 2024, including nine since the start of July. Last year, 12 migrants are thought to have died or were recorded as missing.

Responding to reports of the deaths, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “It’s awful. It’s a further loss of life.”

He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme he had been to the National Crime Agency and seen the “awful sort of rubber dinghies that people are coming across the Channel with, many of them, of course, not able to make it in these contraptions”.

The Government has been “discussing how we go after those gangs, in co-operation upstream with other European partners”, he added.

Sir Keir Starmer will be in Italy on Monday for talks with counterpart Giorgia Meloni about her efforts to tackle the problem “and the work they have done, particularly, with Albania”.

The Prime Minister has said he is interested in the rollout of the policy, under which Tirana will accept asylum seekers on Italy’s behalf while their claims are processed.

On Saturday, French maritime authorities said more than 200 people were rescued in the Channel in a 24-hour period from Friday to Saturday.

Some 801 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK on Saturday, according to provisional Home Office figures, the second highest daily total so far this year.

The migrants crammed into 14 boats, an average of 57 per craft.

The only day this year which saw a higher number of crossings was June 18, when 882 people made the journey.

Saturday’s arrivals take the total so far in 2024 to 23,241, with 9,667 since Sir Keir became Prime Minister.