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French Coastguard: One Dead after Migrant Dinghy Flounders in Channel

(FILES) This photograph taken on August 29, 2023, shows a French gendarme vehicle patrolling near the beach of Gravelines, northern France, to prevent migrants from being smuggled to Britain. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph taken on August 29, 2023, shows a French gendarme vehicle patrolling near the beach of Gravelines, northern France, to prevent migrants from being smuggled to Britain. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
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French Coastguard: One Dead after Migrant Dinghy Flounders in Channel

(FILES) This photograph taken on August 29, 2023, shows a French gendarme vehicle patrolling near the beach of Gravelines, northern France, to prevent migrants from being smuggled to Britain. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph taken on August 29, 2023, shows a French gendarme vehicle patrolling near the beach of Gravelines, northern France, to prevent migrants from being smuggled to Britain. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

One person drowned and another is critically ill after an inflatable dinghy carrying 66 migrants towards Britain ran into difficulty off the northern French coast, the French coastguard said on Friday.

French rescuers reached the distressed boat at about 1 a.m. (0000 GMT) and found that one of its inflatable tubes had deflated. A number of migrants were in the cold waters of the Channel, Reuters reported.

Two unconscious people were pulled from the sea. One was airlifted to the French port city of Calais, while the other could not be revived, the coastguard said in a statement.

Search operations were continuing, it added.

The Channel, which separates Britain and continental Europe, is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

More than 29,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing in small boats this year, according to Migration Watch UK, representing a fall of about one third in 2022.

In November 2021 at least 27 migrants died after a dinghy sank in the Channel, the highest known number of deaths in a single incident.

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At Least 47 Injured after Explosion at Port in Iran's Bandar Abbas

This image grab taken from footage released by the state television of IRIBNEWS on April 26, 2025 shows people walking away as smoke billows following an explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port dock southwest of Bandar Abbas in the Iranian province of Hormozgan. (Photo by IRIBNEWS / AFP)
This image grab taken from footage released by the state television of IRIBNEWS on April 26, 2025 shows people walking away as smoke billows following an explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port dock southwest of Bandar Abbas in the Iranian province of Hormozgan. (Photo by IRIBNEWS / AFP)
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At Least 47 Injured after Explosion at Port in Iran's Bandar Abbas

This image grab taken from footage released by the state television of IRIBNEWS on April 26, 2025 shows people walking away as smoke billows following an explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port dock southwest of Bandar Abbas in the Iranian province of Hormozgan. (Photo by IRIBNEWS / AFP)
This image grab taken from footage released by the state television of IRIBNEWS on April 26, 2025 shows people walking away as smoke billows following an explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port dock southwest of Bandar Abbas in the Iranian province of Hormozgan. (Photo by IRIBNEWS / AFP)

A large explosion rocked Shahid Rajaee port in the southern Iranian city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, with at least 47 people injured after the blast, state media reported.
The blast occurred as Iran began a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman, although the cause of the explosion was not immediately clear, said Reuters.
"The cause of this incident was the explosion of several containers stored in the Shahid Rajaee Port wharf area. We are currently evacuating and transferring the injured to medical centers," a local crisis management official told state TV.
Fars news agency reported that 47 people were injured according to initial estimates.
Semi-official Tasnim news agency added that the port's activities were suspended to extinguish the fire and that considering the large number of port employees "many people were probably injured or even killed in the incident."
The blast shattered windows within a radius of several kilometers, Iranian media said, with footage shared online showing a mushroom cloud forming following the explosion.
In 2020, computers at the same port were hit by a cyberattack that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. The Washington Post had reported that Iran's arch-foe Israel appeared to be behind that incident as retaliation for an earlier Iranian cyberattack.