At least six Afghan men died after a migrant boat capsized in the Channel, early Saturday while heading to Britain, French officials said, while a search continued to find those still missing.

The deputy public prosecutor in the French coastal city of Boulogne, Philippe Sabatier, said that six fatalities were Afghan men who were believed to be in their 30s, adding that the rest of the passengers were “almost all Afghans with some Sudanese, mostly adults with some minors.”

He also said 49 survivors were rescued, 36 by the French coastguard and 13 by their British counterparts.

After the prosecutor’s office initially stated that between five and ten passengers were missing, the French coastal authority Premar later reported that up to two people were identified as missing on Saturday afternoon.

Along with two British ships, three French ships, a helicopter, and a plane were dispatched to search the area off Sangatte in northern France, AFP reported.

“HM Coastguard is currently assisting the French authorities, Gris Nez, in a search and rescue response to an incident involving a small boat in the Channel,” a British interior ministry spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added interior minister Suella Braverman would later chair a meeting with Small Boats Operational Command, part of Britain’s Border Force and created to deal with small boat crossings of the Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes between France and Britain known for strong currents, by migrants.

“My thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the tragic loss of life in the Channel today,” Braverman said in a post to social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne likewise posted that her “thoughts go out to the victims” as she praised the efforts of the rescue teams.

Additionally, a spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border “repression” for the tragedy, stating that the difficulty of securing legal passage only “increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England”.

The boat capsized around 2:00am local time (0000 GMT) off the northern coast of France, according to the prosecutor.

Over 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording arrivals in 2018, official figures revealed on Friday.

French authorities have increased patrols and deterrent measures after London agreed to send Paris hundreds of millions of euros annually to the effort.

In recent days, several attempts have been made to cross the Channel in boats after weather conditions improved.

Overnight Thursday, Premar reported that 116 migrants have been rescued, including children, on three separate boats while 755 migrants were detected on 14 small boats heading for England’s southern coast, the highest tally on a single day this year.

The number of arrivals so far this year is nearly 16,000. Last year, five migrants died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross to Britain from France. In November 2021, 27 migrants died when a boat capsized in the Channel.