LILLE, France: Four migrants died Tuesday after the boat in which they had set out from France to try and reach Britain capsized in the English Channel, a French official said.
One man drowned when the boat sank, and three people died after they were pulled from the water alive with 14 others, said the official of the Nord department.
Some of those rescued had gone into cardiac arrest, and others suffered hypothermia.
The group’s small fishing boat capsized in the Channel at about 9:30 am, official Herve Tourmente told journalists earlier in Loon-Plage, near Dunkirk.
“It seems that one person, who might be an infant, is still missing,” Tourmente said, noting that stormy conditions had made the attempted crossing especially perilous.
A growing number of migrants have tried to cross the busy shipping lane for Britain in recent months, with four deaths recorded in 2019 and now seven so far this year.
In September, French authorities said they had intercepted over 1,300 people trying to reach the UK, including a handful who attempted to swim across the Channel.
Northern France has long been a magnet for people seeking to smuggle themselves to Britain in small boats or in one of the tens of thousands of trucks and cars that cross over daily on ferries and trains.
The issue has been a source of tension, with Britain accusing France of not doing enough to stop the crossings.
French authorities insist they are doing all they can.
Four dead after migrant vessel capsizes in Channel
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Four dead after migrant vessel capsizes in Channel
- One man drowned when the boat sank, and three people died after they were pulled from the water alive with 14 others
- Northern France has long been a magnet for people seeking to smuggle themselves to Britain in small boats or in trucks and cars
Iran hacking group claims attack on US medical company
- It issued an open warning to what it described as “Zionist leaders and their lobbies,” adding: “This is only the beginning of a new chapter in cyber warfare.”
WASHINGTON: An Iran-linked hacking group claimed responsibility on Wednesday for a sweeping cyberattack on US medical technology giant Stryker, saying it had wiped more than 200,000 systems and extracted 50 terabytes of data in retaliation for military strikes on Iran.
“Our major cyber operation has been executed with complete success,” Handala said in a statement, describing the attack as retaliation for what it called “the brutal attack on the Minab school” and for “ongoing cyber assaults against the infrastructure of the Axis of Resistance.”
The group said it had shut down Stryker offices in 79 countries and that all extracted data was “now in the hands of the free people of the world.”
It issued an open warning to what it described as “Zionist leaders and their lobbies,” adding: “This is only the beginning of a new chapter in cyber warfare.”
Founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Stryker is a global medical device giant with some 56,000 employees and $25.12 billion in 2025 revenues, making everything from orthopedic implants and surgical instruments to hospital beds and robotic surgery systems.
The Handala group later posted that it had also carried out an attack on Verifone, which specializes in electronic and point-of-sale payments.
The outages began shortly after 0400 GMT on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Windows devices — including laptops and mobile phones connected to Stryker’s networks — were remotely wiped.
