Access to the dike was closed this Sunday in Sangatte, in Pas-de-Calais.
The body of a man wearing a life jacket, "probably" a migrant trying to reach England, was discovered on a beach on Sunday after a night marked by numerous attempted crossings, the prosecution said.
The firefighters say they found this man on Sunday morning, whose age is estimated between 20 and 40 years, in a state of stiff corpse.
According to a press release issued by the Pas-de-Calais prefecture, the deceased man is "Iranian in appearance".
An investigation has been opened to try to determine the circumstances of his death.
Pascal Marconville, prosecutor for Boulogne-sur-Mer, underlines that "a lot of attempts at crossings" occurred during the night.
"A meteorological window seems to have tempted the networks of smugglers".
Nine attempts prevented on Saturday
A sea of oil near the French coast and calm weather have indeed followed several days of rough weather, but the calm near the coast could be deceptive because the high tides cause very violent currents in the strait.
For the day of Saturday alone, the prefecture recorded nine attempts at “prevented” crossings, involving 201 migrants in total, and seven other crossings which reached the British coasts, representing 102 migrants.
Sunday morning, 11 crossings were intercepted by the French authorities, involving 191 migrants.
Some have been seen disembarking in Calais, bundled up in survival blankets, including women and children.
559 successful crossings since the start of the year
For several months, these attempts to cross the Channel on sometimes very precarious boats have multiplied.
According to the prefecture, they claimed the lives of four migrants in 2019 and three in 2020. In mid-August, a Sudanese migrant had drowned while attempting the crossing on a rubber dinghy, in the company of a teenager who had himself, managed to get back to the beach.
The body had already been found on a beach in Sangatte.
On Saturday, six migrants were rescued before being handed over to border police while they were on two kayaks stowed together.
Another group of five young migrants on board a rubber dinghy found itself in difficulty from the first waves, under the watchful eye of witnesses.
The young people had been taken in frozen with cold by the Calais firefighters.
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According to the prefecture, since the start of the year, 479 attempted crossings have been intercepted by the French authorities while 559 have reached their goal, Great Britain.
If the cliffs of Dover seem very close in good weather from the Calaisis coast, the Channel is "one of the busiest areas in the world and where the weather conditions are often difficult," recalls the maritime prefecture.
