SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — The boat filled with migrants was about midway throughout the English Channel when one of many passengers noticed two orange life jackets bobbing within the water.
The seas have been tough, and it was solely once they bought nearer that Zana Hamawandi noticed the vests contained lifeless our bodies.
Soon, different our bodies began showing. As Mr. Hamawandi watched, the present pushed certainly one of them below his inflatable boat, the place it collided with the whirling blades of the outboard motor.
“It came up again, but I saw it floating for just a few seconds before the waves took it away,” he stated. He remembered it was the physique of a person carrying saggy pants.
Another migrant, Karzan Mangury, stated he was so horrified by the corpses that he tried to look away. “Our boat was surrounded by dead bodies,” stated Mr. Mangury. “At that moment my entire body was shaking.”
Their accounts, in telephone interviews from an immigration facility in England, are the primary time they’ve spoken to the information media and are among the many solely witness descriptions of the final minutes of the catastrophe. At least 27 persons are believed to have died, the most important single lack of life within the channel because the International Organization for Migration started gathering knowledge in 2014.
Along with the accounts of family members of a number of the victims, their descriptions additionally inform a narrative of hours of frantic and futile requires assist to the French and English authorities because the migrant boat was sinking. At one level, Mr. Mangury stated, he made 10 calls to a quantity the French police had given him to attempt to report his location, and nobody answered.
His description of his telephone calls is the primary public account by a migrant who spoke straight with the English and French police to report the sinking.
A couple of minutes after seeing the corpses, Mr. Hamawandi and Mr. Mangury stated, they noticed a principally submerged, deflated boat with at the very least two folks clinging to it — believed to be the one survivors of a migrant boat that sank within the channel on Nov 24.
“They were shouting, we could hear them yelling for help,” stated Mr. Hamawandi, a 21-year-old Iraqi Kurd.
Eventually the British Coast Guard rescued Mr. Hamawandi’s vessel, and a French fishing boat picked up the 2 survivors of the sunken boat.
In reporting from cities and cities within the Iraqi Kurdistan area the place lots of the victims got here from, my colleagues and I first heard about Mr. Hamawandi from his household, who feared he had been one of many victims after he instructed them he was in a ship crossing the channel after which dropped out of contact.
Mr. Hamawandi finally put us by way of to Mr. Mangury, who spoke to us on the identical telephone. A location app indicated they have been at a facility that native immigration activists confirmed is used to deal with migrants in Crawley, a city in southern England.
The catastrophe has injected a brand new sense of urgency into efforts by European international locations to regulate high-risk channel crossings higher. Activists additionally imagine the deaths, which included youngsters, spotlight a contentious, ineffective partnership between Britain and France that has failed to enhance the protocols for rescuing migrants in misery.
Mr. Hamawandi and Mr. Mangury set off with 23 different folks early on Nov. 24. After greater than 10 hours within the water, the engine on their very own boat was failing they usually have been working out of gas once they noticed the our bodies.
Mr. Mangury stated their boat was in French waters once they noticed the 2 folks clinging to the deflated boat. He began calling 112, the French misery quantity. “I told them there is a boat broken and people dead. Please help them and help us,” he stated.
He stated the French police requested him to ship his location, however he couldn’t ship to a three-digit quantity. They gave him one other quantity to attempt, however he stated it went unanswered 10 occasions. Eventually he was capable of get a quantity to ship a location by way of WhatsApp.
“I said: ‘Ten times I called! Please answer me,’” he recalled. “‘Please help me!’”
He stated that after an hour the French Coast Guard had not arrived. At about 12:30 p.m. he reached the English police, who instructed him they’d alerted the French.
About 40 minutes later, after their very own boat engine had stalled, Mr. Mangury stated they noticed a helicopter circling and British Coast Guard boats heading towards the our bodies.
His account raises new questions concerning the response of the French and British rescue groups. Many of the victims’ family members accuse the 2 international locations of deflecting duty by saying the boat was in one another’s waters and failing to answer misery calls.
The British Coast Guard stated in a press release that early on Nov. 24, in response to misery calls, it started a search and rescue operation that included a border patrol boat and a helicopter. It didn’t specify which misery calls it obtained.
“Three small boats were located and those onboard rescued,” a spokesperson stated. “No other small boats or people in the water were identified in the search area.”
In France, each judicial and native authorities within the north declined to remark about whether or not they had obtained calls from the migrant boat or from Mr. Mangury, saying they might not focus on a case whereas it was below investigation. A spokeswoman for the maritime authorities in northern France stated they’d been alerted to the ill-fated migrant boat solely by fishermen who discovered it adrift within the channel.
The solely two recognized survivors of the sinking have been an Iranian Kurd and a Somali, presumed to be the migrants seen by Mr. Mangury’s boat.
They instructed the Iraqi Kurdish tv community Rudaw that their inflatable boat had sprung a leak and began to deflate whereas taking up water.
The Somali migrant, recognized by Rudaw as Mohammed Isa Omar, stated they have been frantically calling each the French and British police because the flimsy boat began to sink.
“Most of the calls were to Britain, saying: ‘Help. Help us.’ They said, ‘Send us the location’; we didn’t have the chance,” he instructed the community. He stated at that time the leaking boat capsized, throwing everybody in it into the water together with their telephones.
The different recognized survivor, an Iranian Kurd residing in Iraq recognized by Rudaw as Mohammad Shekha Ahmad, described fellow migrants holding fingers within the frigid water and stated that one after the other they misplaced the energy to carry on and have been carried away.
Mr. Hamawandi and Mr. Mangury stated they have been haunted by not with the ability to assist the 2 surviving migrants holding onto the sunken boat.
“Some of us said, ‘Let’s go and help them,’ but most of them were afraid because they saw the dead bodies in the sea and they thought the same thing would happen to us,” stated Mr. Hamawandi.
Many of the victims have been Iraqis from the Kurdistan area in northern Iraq, and the sinking has despatched waves of grief and anger by way of Kurdish cities and villages.
More than two weeks after the sinking, not one of the households have been formally notified of their family members’ fates.
In the picturesque mountain city of Hajiawa, Nazdar Sharif swung between determined hope that her son Twana Mamand was nonetheless alive and resignation that he was among the many victims.
Twana had tried six occasions during the last two months to cross the channel to Britain, the place his sister has lived for years, stated his brother, Zana Mamand. Each time, he was caught by the French authorities and despatched again.
On his seventh try, Twana set off with a relative. He despatched his brother a dwell location exhibiting them roughly in the course of the channel, Zana Mamand stated.
He instructed him by speaker telephone that they might be in British waters in an hour. Mr. Mamand may hear the passengers on the opposite finish of the road.
“Everybody was happy and laughing,” Zana Mamand stated.
An hour later, when he was now not capable of attain his brother, he referred to as their sister and brother-in-law in London. The brother-in-law, who for privateness causes requested to be recognized solely by his final title, Abdullah, stated he spoke to the relative Twana was touring with at about 1 a.m. and instructed him to name the police.
He stated two hours later his relative instructed them different folks on the boat had referred to as the French and English police however had been instructed they have been in one another’s waters.
That was the final time he was capable of attain him.
At the Mamand household’s dwelling close to the city of Ranya, the place lots of of younger males have left for Britain previously few months, Twana’s mom emerged from a again room, distraught, carrying a string of blue plastic beads meant to thrust back hurt.
“I tell myself he is coming back,” stated Ms. Sharif, 49, leaning towards one other of her sons for help. “I need an answer soon whether he is dead or alive. I want my son.”
Barzan Jabar contributed reporting from Sulaimaniya and Hajiawa, Iraq, and Constant Méheut from Paris.