Four people have died after a migrant boat got into difficulties crossing the English Channel on a freezing night.
A fishing crew spotted the dinghy sinking in ice-cold waters between Kent and France just after 03:00 GMT.
The skipper pulled his boat alongside and his crew hauled 31 people to safety in a dramatic rescue operation, the BBC has been told.
Footage filmed from the boat showed some dressed only in T-shirts and thin lifejackets screaming for help.
The video – shared by the owner of the fishing trawler, Ben Squire – showed crew members pulling people up out of the water and the boat with ropes.
People can be heard panicking and shouting as water appears to fill the inflatable boat.
In the night sky, helicopter lights shine down and airlift people away, as lifeboats arrive at the scene to continue rescuing people.
A government spokesman said authorities were alerted at 03:05 GMT to a small boat in difficulty off the coast of Dungeness, 30 miles west of Dover.
Mr Squire, who was not on the boat for the rescue, said the skipper Ray Strachan told him they saved 31 people.
After hauling them to safety, the crew gave them hot showers, their own clothes and fed them to help warm them up.
Mr Squire said the sea was quite cold and the conditions were “a little bit rough”.
Overnight on Tuesday, temperatures dropped to 1C, with it likely to have been colder out at sea. A yellow weather warning for ice was in place across Kent at the time.
It was a horrific incident, he said, but the crew did a “cracking job”.
“They did brilliantly getting that many people on board the boat”, Mr Squire said. BBC.
