“I have flashbacks of the incident,” survivor of deadly boat acciden

“Where are you?”

When passengers began making a series of distress calls, they were reported to have been asked that question about 17 times.

This was one of the revelations made during the ongoing UK inquiry into the boat accident in the English Channel on November 24, 2021 that killed at least 27 people. The victims were mainly Iraqi Kurds and reportedly included at least seven women, a 16-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl. Four people remain missing.

The tragedy is considered the deadliest “small boats” crossing in the Channel in recent history.

The independent inquiry was initiated by the UK government to investigate what caused the shipwreck, and whether UK and French authorities responded appropriately.

It is not certain what caused the boat to capsize. Rory Philips, counsel for the Inquiry said it could have been a combination of “fuel erosion, overcrowding, a failure in the fabric of the boat, the height of the waves”.

In his address, Philips highlighted the critical questions that were the subject of the inquiry: why passengers were left in the water for over 12 hours after making distress calls to UK emergency services and why despite multiple distress calls, “no-one came to their rescue”.

The UK inquiry is being conducted in parallel with legal proceedings in France where seven military personnel have reportedly been charged with failure to assist persons in danger. Several people suspected of smuggling are also being prosecuted.

The UK inquiry, which will also review evidence from the Coast Guard and British rescue services, will run until March 27. 

Issa Mohamed Omar was one of only two people who survived after the inflatable dinghy that he boarded in France capsized. InfoMigrants reviewed transcripts of the on-going hearings to piece together Omar’s account of the harrowing incident.

Migrants waited for hours in sinking boat for help to arrive

Omar and the other migrants had walked for two hours before reaching the launching site in Dunkirk on November 23, 2021. They had been living in makeshift camps on the coast of Northern France. Omar recalled that the group of about 30 people were walking slowly because there were women and children.

They reached the beach at about 9pm where they were reportedly met five smugglers. One passenger was assigned to navigate and given a GPS device to locate their final destination, Dover in the UK. Some were given numbers to call in case of an emergency.

The waters were calm when they had set sail but after about three hours, the boat began to take in water.

The first call for help was made just after one o’clock in the morning. A second call was made at 2:30am. The Valiant, a UK Border Force boat, reportedly did not leave until 2:22am and it took another hour to get to the last location of the sinking boat.

The Valiant had carried out another rescue operation that night and after not finding Omar’s distressed boat in its last location, it was mistakenly recorded as another boat that was assisted — even though it reportedly did not fit the description of the sinking boat.

Hours waiting to be rescued

The boat capsized, plunging Omar and the other passengers into freezing cold waters. Omar held on to what remained of the boat but throughout the night, he could hear people around him screaming. 

Everyone on the boat was wearing life jackets, but they were no match for the mercurial waters of the English Channel. “Even if you were a good swimmer, it was very difficult to carry on in these conditions,” Omar said. The lead counsel of the inquiry described the life jackets as “colored vests stuffed with cotton or other fabric with strips of reflective material”.

The sun had already come up when French fishermen came to their rescue. By then, it had been more than 12 hours since a call for help had been made.  

Twenty six people were pronounced dead and four remain missing. 

Some of the passengers may have drowned immediately, according to a report by a cold water expert. However, it is likely that majority of victims died over a long period. Possible causes of death included drowning because they could no longer hold on to the wreckage or loss of consciousness, or cardiac arrest due to hypothermia brought on by the 13-degree Celsius waters. 

“If rescue would come quickly, I believe half of those people would be still alive today. Because we have been seen as refugee and that’s the reason why I believe the rescue, they did not come at all. And we feel like we were like an animal,” said Omar. 

“This is when people start dying and there was a lot of — people were screaming. It’s very painful when someone is dying inside the water,” said Omar. 

Trauma that lingers 

Omar suffered physical injuries and was brought to a hospital where he met Mohammed, the only other survivor of the boat accident. Mohammed told Omar that he was originally thought to be dead and was placed alongside the other dead bodies.

Omar had to spend about four months in various hospitals for treatment and physiotherapy to learn how to walk again. He also suffered from diabetes which began to affect his eyesight and “also different conditions and illness that it’s difficult to say how many.”  

In his testimony at the inquiry, Omar said that more than the physical injuries, he suffers from erratic sleeping patterns and mentally reliving the boat accident and thinking about the other passengers around him who began to die one by one as they waited to be rescued. “I have flashbacks of the incident remembering the other people, even if I try to take away from my mind,” he said. 

A long history of fleeing  

Omar had made two previous attempts to cross the English Channel from Calais but had a long history of running even before then.

He had to first flee his home in 2006. He was about 13-years-old and living in Somalia, about 90 miles from the capital Mogadishu. His father, who was governor of the town, was killed when fighting between the government and militant group Al Shabab broke out.

He believed that his father was targeted because he was a governor of the town and he was working with the government.  

Omar’s mother and siblings escaped to Yemen where they were granted asylum. In Yemen, Omar went to school, learned to speak Arabic and even learned to swim. But another war broke out between between the Houthi rebel movement and a Saudi-led coalition supporting government forces. Omar was thrown into prison and separated from his mother and siblings who fled to Ethiopia. 

From Yemen, Omar found himself in Iran and then Turkey, Greece, and Italy. He left Italy in November 2021 to make his way to France where he moved from Calais and Dunkirk. It was here where he met a smuggler in Calais who told him to go to Dunkirk and to cross to the UK. 

“The reason why I want to come to UK, in order to establish my life, in order that I could be educated, in order that I could help my family,” said Omar. He said that it was not possible for Somali national to seek asylum in France and he was not treated well in Italy. 

Government data indicates that the number of migrants crossing the English Channel into the United Kingdom in 2024 rose by 25%. An estimated 36,816 people attempted to enter the UK in last year. At least 76 deaths were reported, making it the deadliest year on record for Channel crossings.

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