More migrants risk their lives to cross the Channel just over a week after tragic family were killed

A boat full of migrants was brought into Dover this morning, just over a week after a Kurdish-Iranian family was killed making the same journey.  

The group of men and women braved chilly November conditions in the English Channel in a bid to reach Britain. 

Wearing face coverings and blankets to keep warm, they were safely brought ashore having been spotted off the Kent coast. 

It followed the arrival of 96 others from the previous two days, which were the first after the deaths of a Kurdish-Iranian family, who lost their lives when their overcrowded boat sank off the coast of France last week.

Rasoul Iran-Nejad and his wife Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, lost their lives along with their children Anita, nine, and Armin, six, in the tragedy.

Their baby son Artin, just 15 months old, was also on board and is missing, presumed dead. 

Numbers of people crossing the Channel dropped off sharply in October and November, likely as a result of colder temperatures and choppy seas.

Nonetheless more than 7,500 migrants have successfully made the crossing to the UK this year.

This comes despite Home Secretary Priti Patel repeatedly vowing to make the route ‘unviable’.