Pair are charged with immigration offences after five migrants including a child died

Two 22-year-old men have been charged with immigration offences as part of an investigation into the deaths of five migrants, including a child, who died trying to cross the English Channel, the National Crime Agency have said. 

Yien Both, a 22-year-old from South Sudan, has been charged with assisting unlawful immigration and attempting to arrive in the UK without valid entry clearance.

Tajdeen Adbulaziz Juma, a 22-year-old Sudanese national, has been charged with attempting to arrive in the UK without valid entry clearance.

Both men have been remanded in custody and are expected to appear before Folkestone Magistrates’ Court later on Friday.

A third man, an 18-year-old from Sudan, has been bailed pending further inquiries.

The five people who died were onboard a vessel designed for a maximum of 20 people on Tuesday. They include a girl who was six, a woman in her 30s and three men.

Migrants on the boat just after the incident on Tuesday (The French Maritime Prefecture captured the photo)

The massively overcrowded small boat with 112 people on board briefly ran aground off the northern French coast at Wimereux, near Boulogne-sur-Mer 

However, after the dinghy was overrun by 50 men from sub-Saharan Africa minutes before it was due to set off from France, they were crushed to death. 

The boat had 112 people on board when it left from France with 402 migrants crossing the Channel in a total of seven boats that day. 

The five people who died were thought to have suffocated in the crush off a beach at Wimereux, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, on Tuesday morning.

Despite the deaths, the men who had stormed aboard, and displaced most of the paying voyagers, were allowed to continue of their journey to England.

They were first escorted by the French Navy, and then the British authorities took over.