Two migrants die after falling unconscious during English Channel crossing

Two migrants have died trying to cross the English Channel overnight. (File photo). (Image: Getty)

Two migrants died attempting to cross the English Channel in a boat packed with almost 80 migrants.

The French coastguard said two asylum seekers were recovered from the water unconscious.

Another 10 people were rescued in the latest Channel horror and the boat was allowed to carry on to Britain after the other migants refused to be rescued.

Rescue teams said the vessel left from a beach in Gravelines.

A spokesman for France’s Maritme prefecture confirmed that the unidentified migrants were "pulled out by a Navy vessel" and sailors "performed first aid on the two victims, but they were soon declared dead."

Another investigating source said the the boat was ‘heavily overcrowded’, and designed to carry no more than 20 people.  

Pictures show migrants wrapped in blankets disembarking from a Border Force boat in Dover, Kent, on Wednesday morning.

Others were also brought to shore in an RNLI lifeboat.

The deaths on Wednesday come just days after another migrant was confirmed dead after a small boat sank in the Channel.

The Maritime Prefect of the Channel and the North Sea said on Monday that 62 people were pulled from the water after the “overloaded” boat broke up overnight.

More than 12,500 people have made the journey across the Channel and arrived in the UK so far this year, a record number for this point in the calendar year since data was first collected in 2018.