The migrant dinghy in which five people died was chaotic, overloaded and packed with people carrying weapons and fighting, according to one of the passengers who was on board, speaking exclusively to Sky News.

Heivin, 18, confirmed the boat was stormed by a rival group of migrants, armed with sticks and knives, as it was preparing to set off.

She said: “People were fighting, people were getting stepped on, they were dying and being thrown off.”

She said she fell into the water but was pulled out by another person on the boat. Two other passengers who fell into the water, including a young girl, drowned. Three other people died on the boat.

Heivin said she “really hated” the group of people who hijacked their boat, insisting they should take the blame for what happened.

“They caused a huge tragedy,” she said.

“It was because of them that people died.

“If they hadn’t come and started fighting, none of this would have happened.”

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The tragedy happened in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the waters off the French coastal town of Wimereux.

The boat, which launched with 112 people on board, stopped on a sandbar only a few hundred metres from the shore.

By the time emergency services arrived, it was clear people had died, both on the boat and in the water.

Two men have been charged with immigration offences in connection with the investigation into the deaths of the five migrants.

“I fell into the water but a man helped me up,” Heivin said.

“Everyone was climbing aboard and there were too many people – over 110 of us.

“I had tried to be at the front, but after I fell in the water I sat on the edge of the boat and didn’t go towards the other end – that’s where people were fighting.

“I thank God that I didn’t get into the top part of the dinghy. I would have suffocated. I thank God for that every day.”

She said her group, comprising between 50 and 60 people, had arrived at the beach in Wimereux after following the instructions of the people smugglers who had taken their money in exchange for arranging a passage to Britain.

Hidden away, they had waited for the smugglers to prepare the dinghy. She then saw police officers and was told simply to run towards the water.

At that point, the rival group emerged as well, clambering into the boat along with the people who had paid the smugglers.

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Heivin said she saw migrants from this group carrying sticks and knives, squaring up to both the police and the original passengers.

When the boat set off, exceptionally overladen, it meandered towards the Channel, but there was still fighting and it is clear that some people were being crushed.

“I was aware there was a fight,” Heivin said.

“They were shouting that people were stuck underneath other people, that they couldn’t get out, that some were falling under people’s feet.”

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Heivin has spent seven months travelling across Europe since leaving Iraq. She said she wanted to get to Britain because “it is a better country for me, definitely in terms of the language but also, in many other other ways, it is better than the rest of Europe”.

She’s made 30 attempts to cross the Channel, but has failed each time. Sometimes it has been the French police who have destroyed boats while other times the boat on which she was travelling broke down. One time, the boat failed only an hour from British waters.

She is undeterred by the trauma that she underwent, however, and she intends to try again to reach Britain as soon as possible. “Perhaps this weekend,” she said.

Two men have been granted conditional bail after being charged with spying for China.

Former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash and co-defendant Christopher Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act after a counterterrorism investigation.

The men appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday but were not required to enter any pleas to the charge.

It is alleged that between January 2022 and February 2023, Cash obtained, recorded and published information “for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state” and which could be “directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy”.

Berry is accused of the same offence between December 2021 and February 2023.

Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring granted both men conditional bail, which in Cash’s case included not contacting MPs or any other staff of parliamentarians and not entering the parliamentary estate.

Cash was told he was permitted to contact his local MP on constituency matters.

He and Berry were also told not to travel outside the UK and not to contact each other. They were also ordered to sign on at a police station.

China has dismissed the charges as “self-staged political farce”.

Cash previously worked as a parliamentary researcher and was closely linked to senior Tories including Tom Tugendhat, now security minister, and Alicia Kearns, who serves as chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

He was director of the China Research Group, which was initially chaired by Mr Tugendhat and then Ms Kearns.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle previously told MPs two people had been charged on a matter “relating to national security”, one of whom was a parliamentary pass holder.

Both defendants will appear at the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing on 10 May.

A school in South Wales was locked down after a teenage pupil allegedly received threatening messages.

Gwent Police said Ebbw Fawr Learning Community in Ebbw Vale, Blaenau Gwent, was placed into lockdown at around 10.20am on Friday.

The force confirmed that police officers had attended the school, where they remained to provide reassurance.

A police spokeswoman said: “We have arrested a teenage boy on suspicion of making threats.

“The arrest did not take place on school premises and was not in the Ebbw Vale area.

“Our inquiries are ongoing.”

The incident comes after two teachers and a pupil sustained stab wounds at Ysgol Dyffryn Aman in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, on Wednesday.

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