Five migrants have died during an attempt to cross the English Channel, French police have said.

A child was among the bodies discovered at the Wimereux beach in northern France on Tuesday, reports said.

The French coastguard confirmed there was a failed attempt to cross the Channel and police were operating at a beach following the incident.

Latest updates on Channel migrant rescue – Politics Hub

The spokesperson said there were several “lifeless bodies” after the tragedy, which occurred during a crowd panic, but was unable to confirm how many boats and people may still be in danger at sea.

The boat had 110 people on board, Reuters said, quoting Northern France authorities.

Around a hundred migrants have already been rescued by a French navy tug, and are being taken to Boulogne, French newspaper La Voix Du Nord said.

Emergency services picked up the father of a four-year-old girl, who was “in tears on the beach”, the paper said.

It comes hours after the UK’s government’s controversial Rwanda bill – intended to deter migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats – was passed.

Home Secretary James Cleverly, whose department is responsible for the effort, said on X on Tuesday: “These tragedies have to stop. I will not accept a status quo which costs so many lives.”

He said ministers are “doing everything we can to end this trade”.

On Tuesday morning, Sky News filmed a suspected migrant boat attempting to cross the Channel. We do not know if it is the boat which has failed to make the crossing. The latest updates on the migrant crisis is here.

Sky’s Europe correspondent, Adam Parsons, in Dunkirk, said at least four vessels were working off the coast of Wimereux as well as helicopters and there were “reports of survivors”.

Sea conditions could not be blamed, he said, as they were “perfect”.

He said: “If you were trying to cross the Channel in a small boat, this is the day you would do it, so if you can’t make it on a day like this, it shows how dangerous it is.”

The Channel is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and currents are strong, making the crossing on small boats extremely hazardous.

People smugglers typically overload rickety dinghies, leaving them barely afloat and at risk of being lashed by the waves as they try to reach Britain.

The Rwanda bill, which Rishi Sunak says will curb the illegal trade, will finally become law after the House of Lords decided they would no longer oppose it following hours of wrangling. The measure was finally approved just after midnight.

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For weeks, peers have been pushing back on the scheme – which seeks to deport asylum seekers arriving in the UK via small boats to the African nation – and trying to get ministers to make changes to the controversial legislation.

But after further rounds of so-called “ping pong” saw the bill flit between both Houses throughout Monday evening, both MPs and peers have now agreed to the plan, and it will soon become law – with Rishi Sunak pledging the first flights will take off “in 10 to 12 weeks”.

Human rights groups have described the legislation as inhumane and cruel.

Children as young as three are being manipulated into “disturbing” acts of sexual abuse, according to a report by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

Warning: This story contains descriptions of child sexual abuse imagery

Last year was the most extreme year on record for the IWF’s abuse hotline, which saw a 22% increase in “category A” imagery.

Category A imagery involves penetrative sexual activity, images involving sexual activity with an animal, or sadism.

For the first time, the charity analysed a whole year’s worth of data on abuse of three-to-six year olds and found these young children were being targeted while online on phones and devices within the family home.

“All ‘self-generated’ child sexual abuse imagery is horrific but seeing so many very young children in these images and videos is particularly distressing,” said the report.

The amount of “self-generated” child sexual abuse images jumped by 27% in one year. This is created by the perpetrator as they direct the victim remotely and record it from webcams. It made up the vast majority of abusive images analysed by the IWF.

“The term ‘self-generated’ does not mean that the child is instigating the creation of this sexual content themselves,” said the report’s authors.

“They are being groomed, coerced and in some cases blackmailed into engaging in sexual behaviour. They are never to blame for the creation or existence of this imagery.”

Most of the imagery showed children in a home setting and most often in a child’s bedroom. In the background, analysts saw soft toys, games, books and bedding featuring cartoon characters.

“These are very young children, supposedly in the safety of their own bedrooms, very likely unaware that the activities they are being coerced into doing are being recorded and saved and ultimately shared multiple times on the internet,” said the report.

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‘Predators are targeting younger and younger victims’

The IWF is one of only a handful of non-government organisations worldwide with the legal powers to proactively search for child sexual abuse online so it can be removed from the internet and passed onto police.

The charity is now calling for children under six to be warned about online dangers.

“The opportunistic criminals who want to manipulate your children into disturbing acts of sexual abuse are not a distant threat,” said Susie Hargreaves, the IWF’s chief executive.

“They are trying to talk to them now on phones and devices you can find in any family home.

“If children under six are being targeted, we need to be having age appropriate conversations now to make sure they know how to spot the dangers.”

“This deeply disturbing report shows that predators are targeting younger and younger victims,” said Security Minister Tom Tugendhart.

“My message to parents is to speak to your children about their use of social media, because the platforms you presume safe may pose a risk.”

Last week, Ofcom published a report showing more than 40% of parents of five-to-seven year olds say they use social media with their child, while a third admitted their child uses social media independently.

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Some 30% of parents of these younger children also said they would allow their child to have a profile on social media before they reached the minimum age required.

“Offenders are gaining access to even younger children, which is simply unimaginable for us all,” said Ian Critchley, the NPCC’s child protection lead.

“But this isn’t just the responsibility of parents and carers – the biggest change though we must see is from the tech companies and online platforms.

“Companies are still failing to protect children and continue far too often to put profit before child safety.”

If you want to understand why people are still risking everything to cross the Channel, let me take you to a quiet street near Dunkirk, where chaos is in the air.

A group of around 40 or 50 people – migrants who have just failed in their latest attempt to cross the Channel – are being corralled down the road. They are tired and bruised. The police are around them, like teachers trying to take control of an unruly school trip.

Behind, police officers on foot, shouting instructions in French that almost nobody can understand. The group turns, as one, and heads down a side road that leads to a field.

“Non, non,” shouts the policeman, exasperated. His head rolls back. “NON,” he bellows, then runs after them.

These people are mostly strangers to each other, united by the single aim of reaching Britain. We had seen the group 12 hours earlier, crossing another field, clearly on their way to a nearby beach, but then they disappeared from our sight, heading off down an alleyway between houses.

Like so many people, they had attempted to make the crossing, and failed. This time, according to one of those we spoke to, the cause was the police, patrolling these beaches throughout the night.

As the group tried to take a boat to the shore, the police punctured it, rendering the vessel useless.

But that’s not all. They also claimed the police had used rubber bullets to disperse them.

Bich, a Vietnamese woman who we find sitting on the ground, tearfully exhausted, rolls up her trouser to expose a nasty, vivid bruise.

“We went towards the boat but the police shot at us. They destroyed the boat and it sank. And then they shot me.”

“Plastic pistols,” is how another man described the weapons, showing me a much bigger bruise on his thigh. A third has a circular bruise, with a dot in the middle, as if he has been hit by the top of a canister.

The group was a varied bunch. Very often, over the years of talking to migrant groups of northern France, they have been united by background – one boat is full of Iraqi Kurds, say, while another is packed with Afghans.

But here, we found an international group.

Yes, Kurds, Iraqis and Afghans, but also Syrians, Vietnamese, Sudanese and, hidden behind a cap and jumper pulled over his mouth and nose, a man who told me he was from Morocco.

Some have been determined to reach Britain ever since they left their home countries. Others are more pragmatic. One more told me he had wanted to stay in France but had just been told he was going to be deported.

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“We have problems but we are being deported, so we want to go to Britain for a better life,” says one. “Deport, deport,” shouts another man.

So Britain may represent his last chance at asylum as a host of European nations start to increase the number of deportation orders they issue.

The European Union has just concluded a long-debated agreement on migration, intended to toughen both its borders and its resolve.

Sweden, France, Italy and plenty of others are using much tougher rhetoric about removing people from their territory who have been refused asylum. And the results are beginning to be seen.

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Germany, which opened its doors to more than a million people fleeing Syria, is among those increasing its number of deportations, with 20% more migrants sent away in the first two months of this year compared with the same period of 2023.

And then, of course, there is the UK’s Rwanda plan, designed to deter people from making these crossings, backed by the prime minister’s unequivocal promise to bring down the number of small boats crossing the Channel.

If they knew about the Rwanda plan, and certainly some did, then they shrugged it off as either ineffective, unjust or simply untrue.

“The UK cannot send me to Africa after what you have done to my country and my area,” said one Syrian man. He knew about the Rwanda policy and said it was “not true”.

“It is not safe in Rwanda so you cannot send people there,” insisted another person, perhaps unwittingly getting to the nub of so many parliamentary exchanges.

“There are people who are trying to escape from Rwanda because of what is happening there. So you cannot say it is safe.”

There is a great deal stacked up against these groups of migrants. The British government doesn’t want them to come, they claim the police in the Dunkirk area have attacked them, the crossing is dangerous and expensive and there is a growing tide of antipathy towards migrants across much of Europe.

Yet none of these people seem deterred, promising to persevere, resolutely sure that reaching British shores will be a panacea to their woes.

“We will be back tomorrow,” says a young man with a wispy beard and a wide smile. “We want to get to the UK.”

His friend next to him simply grinned at me. “UK is good,” he said, with a thumbs-up.

The group amble off, back towards their camp near Grande-Synthe, a town that has become a magnet for migrants. They are exhausted and, in some cases, battered. But they will try again – soon.

Sky News has approached French police for comment on the migrants’ claims.