PARIS, Dec 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — French authorities have formally identified 26 of the 27 bodies recovered after last month’s mass drowning in the English Channel.
Sixteen Kurdish people from Iraq and four Afghans were among the victims, whose families are being informed.
They included two friends from the same town who died in the worst-recorded migrant tragedy in the Channel.
Their inflatable boat sank while attempting to cross to the UK from France on Nov 24.
Rezhwan Hassan, 18, and 27-year-old Afrasia Mohammed, were both from the town of Rania, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a 24-year-old Kurdish woman from northern Iraq, was the first person to be confirmed as a victim in late November.
Other names have been reported by Kurdish media but they are yet to be independently verified. On Tuesday, France’s justice ministry said the bodies of 26 of at least 27 victims had been identified and repatriation requests were under way.
The ministry said it could confirm the identity of 16 Kurdish people from Iraq, including four women aged 22 to 46, a 16-year-old teenager, a seven-year-old child and ten men aged 19 to 37, as well as that of a 23-year-old Kurdish man from Iran.
Three Ethiopians were also identified, including two women aged 22 and 25 and a man aged 46.
A Somali woman aged 33, four Afghan men aged between 24 and 40 and an Egyptian man aged 20 were also identified.
None of the women victims were pregnant, French authorities said. Calais’s mayor said at the time of the tragedy that a pregnant woman was among those who died.
Record numbers of migrants have been making the dangerous journey from France to the UK across the Channel in small boats this year. The crossings have strained an already fraught relationship between France and the UK, which traded recriminations after the tragedy on Nov 24.
But despite the risks, people are still heading to Western countries in large numbers, including many from northern Iraq. An estimated 40,000 people have left the region for Europe in the past year alone, using illegal smuggling routes. — NNN-AGENCIES
