A major search and recovery operation is still underway in the sea off the coast of Kent after a boat carrying asylum seekers capsized

  Four bodies were recovered from the sea yesterday after the inflatable vessel was discovered in distress in the early morning hours. Initially, 43 people were thought to have been rescued; however, that number has now been revised down to 39 in reports, with up to four people still missing. It is understood that there could of been as many as 47 onboard. Two of those rescued were taken to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, which was open to the public all day.  

With the search now continuing more than 30 hours since the incident was first reported, and temperatures dropping to zero degrees overnight, it is feared any remaining missing people will not have survived. Men, women, and children from Senegal, Afghanistan, India, and Iraq boarded the boat. At 2.53 a.m., a phone call was received from a man whose family was in the water. Screams could be heard in the distance. “Please, please, please help me, bro. “We’re in the water with a family,” he explained.   The search and rescue operation began after authorities were notified of the incident at 3:05 a.m. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency asked anyone sailing in the channel to keep an eye out for “any sightings” in the water and report them to the coastguard.

A spokesperson added: “The search has continued overnight utilising a combination of aerial search assets and broadcast action requesting shipping in the area to post lookouts and report any sightings to Dover Coastguard.”   Yesterday, the owner of a fishing company told reporters how the crew of one of his boats came across a boat in distress and saved 31 people.  

“The skipper called me to tell me he was involved in a serious incident,” Ben Squire, owner of Oceanic Drifter Fishing in Plymouth,  

They were fishing in the middle of the Channel, halfway between England and France, and a rigid inflatable boat with migrants on board was crossing and sinking very, very close to where he was fishing.”  

“It appears that the bottom of the rigid inflatable boat with the migrants on it had fallen away,” he continued, “so you had all these people in the water, in cold conditions, still holding onto the boat, obviously cold in the water.” Footage from the boat showed people screaming for help while wearing only t-shirts and thin life jackets, with fishing crew members pulling people out of the water with ropes.

Mr Squire, who was not on the boat during the rescue, said the skipper, Ray Strachan, told him that they saved 31 people.   International rescue efforts continued into the night, involving up to 14 boats, four helicopters, and a fixed-wing plane. A drone is believed to have been deployed today to aid in the search.

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