A teenager was among the four people who died in the English Channel on Wednesday and at least a dozen unaccompanied asylum seeker children were also onboard the small boat that capsized.

Kent County Council leader Roger Gough told Sky News one of the four people who died as they tried to cross the Channel this week was a teenager.

He also said the council has taken into care 12 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who were among those rescued from the boat after it capsized in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

They are among 39 people who were rescued from the chilly waters as temperatures plunged this week.

The boat was carrying up to 50 people when it ran into difficulty.

The Royal Navy, French navy, Coastguard and RNLI lifeboats were all involved in a major rescue operation off the Kent coast after authorities were alerted at 3.05am on Wednesday to a “small boat in distress”.

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A government spokesperson said on Thursday that the search continues with “aerial assets to ensure that everyone is accounted for”.

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Two casualties were taken to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, bosses there said. One was later discharged but the other had died by the time they arrived, it is understood.

On Wednesday, North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale told MPs some of the survivors were still in hospital “fighting for their lives”, including women and children.

Fisherman woken up by migrants ‘screaming for help’

A British fisherman whose crew saved 31 people told Sky News he was woken in the early hours of the morning when migrants surrounded his boat “screaming for help” – and a French charity said they received a mayday call.

The boat’s skipper Raymond said he then counted 45 people holding onto the collapsed dinghy and surrounding his fishing boat.

He said those he rescued came from Afghanistan, Iraq, Senegal and India, and told him they had each paid £5,000 to a smuggler in France for passage into the UK.

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Charity received mayday call

A French charity which helps migrants in Calais said it received a 22-second WhatsApp voice note at 2.53am from a man on a sinking migrant boat begging for help as babies screamed in the background.

The man said people were in the seawater which had entered the vessel and begged the charity to “help us, help us”, according to Nikolai Posner, a spokesman for the Utopia 56 charity.

Dover and Deal MP Natalie Elphicke has urged Rishi Sunak to “meet urgently” with French President Emmanuel Macron to set up joint patrols in the Channel and on the beaches to prevent boats entering the water and to save lives.

The tragedy came a day after Mr Sunak unveiled a raft of new measures in a bid to curb Channel crossings as he told MPs: “We have to stop the boats.”

More than 44,000 people have made the dangerous crossing this year, government figures show.

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