UK sees record Channel migrant arrivals in 2024 as regular immigration falls

Migrants board a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France. (File/AFP)
Migrants board a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France. (File/AFP)
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Updated 22 August 2024
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UK sees record Channel migrant arrivals in 2024 as regular immigration falls

Migrants board a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk.
  • The figures are a reminder of the challenge facing the UK’s new Labour government as it tries to reduce the cross-Channel arrivals amid public unease over the issue

LONDON: The number of migrants arriving in Britain by crossing the Channel on boats hit a record in the first half of 2024, but regular immigration by health workers and students fell, official data showed Thursday.

The UK processed 13,489 so-called small boat migrants in the six months, an 18 percent jump year-on-year and the highest figure ever for that period, according to the interior ministry statistics.

That compared to 11,433 migrants making the perilous journey — across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes — from January to June in 2023.

The figures are a reminder of the challenge facing the UK’s new Labour government as it tries to reduce the cross-Channel arrivals amid public unease over the issue.

The data came in the wake of more than a week of disorder — dubbed anti-immigration riots — across England and in Northern Ireland which saw some rampaging mobs chant “stop the boats.”

The phrase was an unfulfilled pledge from Conservative former premier Rishi Sunak, who lost last month’s general election to Labour’s Keir Starmer.

The disturbances, which hit more than a dozen English towns and cities, followed a deadly knife attack on a group of children, an attack wrongly blamed on a Muslim asylum seeker.

However, the number of arrivals of health sector and other workers as well as students and their dependents dropped in the most recent quarter, and year to June.

It coincided with tighter visa regulations announced by Sunak’s government last December and imposed in April aimed at lowering record immigration levels.

Visas issued for health and care workers, a sector suffering from staffing shortfalls, fell by four-fifths from April to June compared to the same period in 2023.

Student visas granted reduced 13 percent in the year to June, and those issued to students’ dependants dropped 81 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2024.

Various industry and higher education lobby groups have voiced concerns at the new restrictions, which prevented some dependents from coming to the UK and hiked minimum salary requirements for some workers.

On Channel crossings, the latest figures showed 81 percent of arrivals by people without legal permission to enter the UK in the year to June were on small boats from mainland Europe.

UK officials began counting these “irregular” arrivals in 2018, when there were just 11 in the first half of the year.

Since then, more than 133,000 have arrived — 70 percent of them men and around a fifth under-18s, according to the data.

Afghans comprised 18 percent of the arrivals in the year to June — the single largest nationality cohort — followed by Iranians (13 percent), Vietnamese (10 percent), Turkish (10 percent) and Syrians (nine percent).

The new statistics revealed the average numbers in each boat had increased again, from 10 in the year ending June 2019, 44 in the year ending June 2023 to 51 people in the latest corresponding period.

UK authorities have repeatedly warned that smuggling gangs organizing the crossings are adapting their methods, using bigger boats and packing more people in.

Starmer has vowed to “smash the gangs” as the centerpiece of his strategy to tackle the issue, after scrapping contentious Conservative plans to deport thousands of migrants to Rwanda.


Sri Lankan activists call on govt to revoke visa-free policy for Israeli nationals

Sri Lankan activists join a Palestine solidarity protest in front of the presidential secretariat in Colombo on Aug. 5, 2025.
Sri Lankan activists join a Palestine solidarity protest in front of the presidential secretariat in Colombo on Aug. 5, 2025.
Updated 21 sec ago
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Sri Lankan activists call on govt to revoke visa-free policy for Israeli nationals

Sri Lankan activists join a Palestine solidarity protest in front of the presidential secretariat in Colombo on Aug. 5, 2025.
  • Sri Lanka recently extended visa-free entry policy to 40 countries, including Israel, to boost tourism
  • Lawmaker says it is a ‘shameful decision’ that does not reflect nation’s historical support of Palestine

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan activists are calling on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to revoke the government’s decision to grant visa-free entry to Israeli nationals, a policy they say contradicts the island nation’s long-standing solidarity with Palestine.

Sri Lanka has moved to extend its visa-free entry policy to tourists from 40 countries, including Israel, to attract more tourists and speed up the country’s economic recovery, Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath announced last month. 

The decision to include Israel was swiftly opposed by members of Sri Lanka’s civil society, who demanded that Dissanayake exclude Israelis from the policy.

Sri Lankans have also taken to the streets to protest the government’s decision, including a demonstration outside the presidential secretariat in Colombo on Tuesday, and a similar rally in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week.

Thanzeela Ousman, who participated in Tuesday’s protest, told Arab News: “This (visa-free) policy was introduced while the world is witnessing what many, including even Israeli human rights organizations, are calling a genocide in Gaza.

“These groups are urging the international community to impose political and economic pressure on Israel to stop the violence. Instead, our government is offering free access to Israeli nationals, effectively rewarding an aggressive state.

“At the very minimum, Sri Lanka should suspend this visa-free policy and re-evaluate all ties with Israel. We should be aligning with global calls for (a) ceasefire, humanitarian access, and justice, not offering red carpets.”

Swasthika Arulingam, a Sri Lankan lawyer and human rights activist, said that since Israel has mandatory military service for citizens over 18, effectively making most of them members of the Israel Defense Forces, the visa policy was a matter of national security.

“This is a terrible policy for the country … When they are being encouraged to come to a tourist area in Sri Lanka, that itself is a national security concern because they’re fighting in a foreign army,” she told Arab News.

Arulingam also highlighted how the Sri Lankan government has recognized Palestine as a state since 1988 and voted to support numerous UN resolutions opposing Israel.

“They can’t maintain a duplicity by essentially inviting the same IDF soldiers who are committing war crimes to the Palestinian people — committing genocide — to come to Sri Lanka for recreation. When you do that, you are directly complicit in the genocide,” she said.

“During the 1940s, it would have been like inviting the Nazis to come and have a holiday camp in Sri Lanka … It’s very similar to that.”

Concerns over tourists from Israel have been growing in Sri Lanka. The government has vowed to crack down on reported illegal activities carried out by Israeli tourists in the coastal town of Arugam Bay earlier this year, following a series of complaints regarding their arrival in the country.

Civil society groups have protested and petitioned for special screenings of Israelis, after at least one Israeli tourist was identified as a soldier accused of war crimes.

Israel has killed more than 61,100 Palestinians and wounded over 151,400 since October 2023. The true death toll is feared to be much higher, with research published in The Lancet medical journal in January estimating an underreporting of deaths by 41 percent.

The study says the toll may be higher, as it does not include deaths caused by starvation, injury and lack of access to healthcare, caused by the Israeli military’s destruction of most of Gaza’s infrastructure and the blocking of medical and food aid.

In a letter to Dissanayake, lawmaker Mujeebur Rahman described the government’s decision to include Israel in the visa-free policy as a “shameful decision.”

“This allows credibly accused war criminals to enter our motherland and possibly escape justice. It is further alarming to note that Palestine is not among the nations that can enter Sri Lanka without a visa. This is not what is expected from the leadership of a country that has consistently supported a free Palestine,” he wrote.

“Your government’s decision to open the country without due diligence, scrutiny and vetting to IDF members, war criminals, criminal settlers in (the) occupied West Bank and Zionist extremists will inevitably land you and Sri Lanka among the international rejects complicit in the genocide. This will certainly outweigh the currency you expect to gain from tourism.”

Despite the protests, Sri Lankan activists say there has been no response from the government.

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Shaamil Hussein, a member of the Free Palestine Movement of Sri Lanka, told Arab News: “Many Sri Lankans over here … empathize with the Palestinian struggle for justice and self-determination.

“By allowing visa-free entry for Israelis, the government may be seen as compromising its historical support for Palestine.”

“It’s vital for Sri Lanka to maintain its principal stance against injustice and oppression.”


Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc

Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc
Updated 5 min 12 sec ago
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Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc

Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc
  • As in June, July showed a slight dip compared to the preceding two years, averaging 1.25 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) era
  • Last month, temperatures exceeded 50C in the Gulf, Iraq and -- for the first time -- Turkiye

PARIS: The third-hottest July worldwide ended a string of record-breaking temperatures, but many regions were devastated by extreme weather amplified by global warming, the European climate monitoring service said Thursday.

Heavy rains flooded Pakistan and northern China; Canada, Scotland and Greece struggled to tame wildfires intensified by persistent drought; and many nations in Asia and Scandinavia recorded new average highs for the month.

"Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over," Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement.

"But that does not mean climate change has stopped," he said. "We continue to witness the effects of a warming world."

As in June, July showed a slight dip compared to the preceding two years, averaging 1.25 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) era.

2023 and 2024 warmed above that benchmark by more than 1.5C, which is the Paris Agreement target set in 2015 for capping the rise in global temperatures at relatively safe levels.

That deceptively small increase has been enough to make storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather events far more deadly and destructive.

"We continued to witness the effect of a warming world in events such as extreme heatwaves and catastrophic floods in July," Buontempo said.

Last month, temperatures exceeded 50C in the Gulf, Iraq and -- for the first time -- Turkiye, while torrential rains killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan.

In Spain, more than a thousand deaths were attributed by a public institute to the heat in July, half as many as in the same period in 2024.

The main source of the CO2 driving up temperatures is well known: the burning of oil, coal and gas to generate energy.

"Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of impacts," Buontempo said.

Global average temperatures are calculated using billions of satellite and weather readings, both on land and at sea, and the data used by Copernicus extends back to 1940.

Even if July was milder in some places than in previous years, 11 countries experienced their hottest July in at least a half-century, including China, Japan, North Korea, Tajikistan, Bhutan, Brunei and Malaysia, according to AFP calculations.

In Europe, Nordic countries saw an unprecedented string of hot days, including more than 20 days above 30C across Finland.

More than half of the land in Europe and along the Mediterranean basin experienced the worst drought conditions in the first three weeks of July since monitoring began in 2012, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO).

In contrast, temperatures were below normal in North and South America, India and parts of Australia and Africa, as well as in Antarctica.

Last month was also the third-hottest July on record for sea surface temperatures.

Locally, however, several ocean records for July were broken: in the Norwegian Sea, in parts of the North Sea, in the North Atlantic west of France and Britain.

The extent of Arctic sea ice was 10 percent below average, the second lowest for a July in 47 years of satellite observations, virtually tied with the readings of 2012 and 2021.

Diminishing sea ice is a concern not because it adds to sea levels, but because it replaces the snow and ice that reflect almost all the Sun's energy back into space with deep blue ocean, which absorbs it.

Ninety percent of the excess heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans.

In Antarctica, sea ice extent is the third lowest on record for this month.

"Human activities are causing the world to warm at an unprecedented rate," Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, told AFP in commenting on the new data.

On top of the human-driven warming, he explained, there are year-to-year changes caused by natural phenomena, such as the El Nino -- a shift in wind patterns across the southern Pacific -- and volcanic activity that helped push global temperatures past the 1.5C threshold over the last two years.

"These variations are now reducing, dropping us back from the record-breaking temperatures," said Forster, who heads a consortium of 60 top scientists that track core changes in Earth's climate system.

"But the reprieve is only temporary," he added. "We can expect the the high records to be broken again in the near future."


Helicopters rescue people stranded by floods on key India pilgrim route

Helicopters rescue people stranded by floods on key India pilgrim route
Updated 10 min 37 sec ago
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Helicopters rescue people stranded by floods on key India pilgrim route

Helicopters rescue people stranded by floods on key India pilgrim route
  • Helicopters were carrying to safety those who had been stranded
  • Dhami said the destruction was “massive” and that the number of missing persons was still being estimated

BHATWADI, India: Indian rescuers used helicopters on Thursday to pluck to safety people stranded by flood waters in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, two days after a sudden inundation and landslide killed four people, with more still missing.

With roads cleared as rain eased, rescue teams arrived in Dharali, where Tuesday’s wall of water had submerged in sludge homes and cars in the village on the route to the Hindu pilgrim town of Gangotri.

Helicopters were carrying to safety those who had been stranded, the state’s chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, said in a post on X.

Dhami said the destruction was “massive” and that the number of missing persons was still being estimated.

“If the weather supports us then we will bring every single person by tomorrow,” he told Reuters, referring to rescue efforts.

Authorities said about 400 people stuck in Gangotri were being rescued by air, with nine army personnel and seven civilians among the missing.

Relatives of missing people gathered at the helicopter base at Matli village, desperately searching for their loved ones.

Mandeep Panwar said he wanted to reach Dharali, where his brother ran a hotel and is among those missing since Tuesday.

“If you see the videos, ours was the first hotel to be hit by the deluge. I have not heard from my brother and he has been missing since,” Panwar said.

Communication links with rescuers and residents remained disrupted, as mobile telephone and electricity towers swept away by the floods have yet to be replaced, officials said.

Earlier, army rescuers used their hands, as well as machinery, to shift boulders from roads turned into muddy, gushing rivers, visuals showed. More than 225 army personnel were drafted into the rescue, their Northern Command said on X.

“We saw Dharali falling before our eyes,” said Anamika Mehra, a pilgrim headed for Gangotri when the flooding hit.

The hamlet of about 200 people in the state’s Uttarkashi district stands more than 1,150 meters (3,775 feet) above sea level on the climb to the temple town.

Uttarakhand is prone to floods and landslides, which some experts blame on climate change.


Macron urges tougher line in standoff with Algeria

Macron urges tougher line in standoff with Algeria
Updated 07 August 2025
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Macron urges tougher line in standoff with Algeria

Macron urges tougher line in standoff with Algeria
  • Tensions have grown in recent months to new levels between Paris and Algiers, with Macron's hopes of the historic post-colonial reconciliation now appearing a distant dream

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron urged a tougher line from Paris in an intensifying standoff with former north African colony Algeria, saying France’s stance needed to “command respect.”

Tensions have grown in recent months to new levels between Paris and Algiers, with Macron’s hopes of the historic post-colonial reconciliation that he espoused at the start of his presidency now appearing a distant dream.

Algeria is holding in prison French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal and also the prominent French football journalist Christophe Gleizes, while Paris has accused pro-Algiers influencers of inciting hatred inside France.

“France must be strong and command respect,” Macron said in a letter to Prime Minister Francois Bayrou published by the daily newspaper Le Figaro online late Wednesday and in its print edition Thursday.

“It can only obtain this from its partners if it itself shows them the respect it demands. This basic rule also applies to Algeria,” he writes.

Among the measures requested from the government, Macron called for the “formal” suspension of the 2013 agreement with Algiers “concerning visa exemptions for official and diplomatic passports.”

Macron also asked the government to “immediately” use a provision in a 2024 immigration law, which allows the refusal of short-stay visas to holders of service and diplomatic passports, as well as long-stay visas to all types of applicants.

To prevent Algerian diplomats from being able to travel to France via a third country, France will ask its EU partners in the Schengen free travel space to cooperate.

Macron pointed in the letter to the cases of Sansal, sentenced to five years in prison for “undermining national unity,” and Gleizes, sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria for “apology for terrorism.”

Supporters of both men say they are entirely innocent and victims of the current political tensions.

But Macron insisted that his “objective remains to restore effective and ambitious relations with Algeria.”

Macron angered Algiers in July 2024 when he backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front.

Meanwhile, atrocities committed by both sides during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence have long strained relations — even half a century later.

Upping tensions further, Algerian consulates in France have suspended cooperation with French government services on returning Algerians deemed dangerous back to Algeria after being ordered to leave by Paris.

The French government fears that it will have to release Algerian nationals currently detained in detention centers due to the inability to keep them there indefinitely.


Ukraine’s funeral workers bearing the burden of war

Ukraine’s funeral workers bearing the burden of war
Updated 07 August 2025
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Ukraine’s funeral workers bearing the burden of war

Ukraine’s funeral workers bearing the burden of war
  • Ukraine’s funeral workers, who are living through the war themselves and have been repeatedly exposed to violent death throughout Russia’s invasion launched in early 2022, are shouldering a mounting emotional toll while supporting grieving families

SUMY: At a funeral home in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, Svitlana Ostapenko paced around as she prepared the dead for their final journey.

After five years of working in the funeral home, she was used to seeing dead bodies, but the growing number of dead — including young people from Russia’s invasion — was starting to overwhelm even her.

“Death doesn’t discriminate between young and old,” the funeral director told AFP, breaking down in tears.

Ukraine’s funeral workers, who are living through the war themselves and have been repeatedly exposed to violent death throughout Russia’s invasion launched in early 2022, are shouldering a mounting emotional toll while supporting grieving families.

What’s more, Ostapenko’s hometown of Sumy near the Russian border, has come under bombardment throughout the invasion but advancing Russian troops have brought the fighting to as close as 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.

Every day, Ostapenko lays the region’s dead in coffins.

“One way or another, I’m getting by. I take sedatives, that’s all,” the 59-year-old said.

There has been no shortage of work.

On April 13, a double Russian ballistic missile strike on the city killed 35 people and wounded dozens of others.

Residents pass without giving a second thought to the facades of historic buildings that were pockmarked by missile fragments.

“We buried families, a mother and her daughter, a young woman of 33 who had two children,” said Ostapenko.

During attacks at night, she said she takes refuge in her hallway — her phone in hand in case her services are needed.



Every day, the Ukrainian regional authorities compile reports on Russian strikes in a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Petro Bondar, Svitlana’s colleague, said he noted the names of the victims in his notebook to “understand how much grief these bombings cause.”

“They’re not just numbers,” he told AFP.

“They were living people, souls.”

Igor Kruzo knew them only too well.

His job is to immortalize their names in granite tombstones, along with portraits he paints stroke by stroke.

The 60-year-old artist and veteran said he found it difficult to live with the faces he has rendered for gravestones.

Soldiers, civilians, children, “all local people,” he said.

“When you paint them, you observe their image, each with their own destiny,” he said, never speaking of himself in the first person, avoiding eye contact.

At the cemetery, bereaved families told him about the deaths of their loved ones.

“They need to be heard.”

The conversations helped him cope psychologically, he said.

“But it all cuts you to the bone,” he added.

He used to paint elderly people, but found himself rejuvenating their features under his brush.

He remembered a mother who was killed protecting her child with her body at the beginning of the war. “A beautiful woman, full of life,” whom he knew, he said.

“And you find yourself there, having to engrave her image.”

In recent months, his work had taken an increasingly heavier toll.

In the new wing of the cemetery reserved for soldiers, a sea of yellow and blue flags was nestled among the gravestones.

Enveloped by pine trees, workers bustled around a dozen newly dug holes, ready to welcome young combatants.



In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since 2022, and “tens of thousands” more were missing or in captivity — a figure that observers believed to be an underestimate.

Russia has not published its combat losses, but a tally by the independent newspaper Meduza and the BBC estimates the military death toll at more than 119,000.

“The dead appear in my dreams,” Kruzo said.

He said he saw soldiers crying over graves, or his daughter’s friends lying lifeless in the cemetery aisle.

“For the past three years, all my dreams have been about the war. All of them.”

Ironically, he said he was drowning himself in work because “it’s easier.”

He said he had never broken down, that he was tough man who served in the Soviet army, but that he was living in a “kind of numbness.”

“I don’t want to get depressed,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Behind him, a young, pregnant woman fixed her eyes on the portrait of a soldier smiling at her from the marble slab set in the earth.