Eight migrants have died overnight off the coast of France while attempting to cross the Channel, a police source has told local media.
Rescue services were called to waters in the commune of Ambleteuse around 1am local time, according to reports this morning.
French maritime authorities said that 200 people were rescued in a 24-hour period over Friday and Saturday.
People were rescued from four different boats by the French coast guard and other first responders – one boat had 61 people, another had 55, and two more had 48 and 36 individuals each, according to the BBC.
All of those rescued were brought back to land.
Regional prefect Jacques Billant is set to hold a news conference at 10:00 local time (9am BST).
Responding to the reports, 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”.
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,.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said: “This is yet another appalling and avoidable tragedy and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who’ve died.
“These perilous crossings are seemingly becoming more and more dangerous, suggesting smugglers are taking greater chances with people’s lives as they try to evade detection efforts by the UK and French authorities.
“The Government’s ‘smash the gangs’ slogan and its security-heavy approach is contributing to the death toll because the refusal to establish safe asylum routes means these flimsy vessels controlled by people smugglers are the only real option for desperate people fleeing persecution.
“Until UK ministers and their counterparts in France start sharing responsibility over the need for safe routes, we should expect this weekend’s tragedy to keep repeating itself time and time again.”
The incident comes more than a week the deadliest attempted Channel crossing this year, when six children and a pregnant woman were among at least 12 migrants who died when their boat was “ripped open”.
More than 53 survivors were plucked from waters off Gris-Nez point, between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer, during a major air and sea rescue operation on 3 September.
More than 30 people have died in Channel crossings so far this year.
Around 400 people have arrived in Britain on small boats over the past seven days, according to official UK figures, taking the provisional total this year to over 21,000.
The Labour government has vowed to “smash” the people-smuggling gangs behind the crossings, in part through increased cooperation with other European nations.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper moved to establish a new Border Security Command in her first days in office, while in August, Sir Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron pledged to work together more closely to dismantle migrant smuggling routes.
