The search for a boy that disappeared on Saturday afternoon in the North Sea off the northern French coast municipality of Gravelines was called off on Saturday evening. The boy is from a Syrian family that lives in Brussels.
On Saturday afternoon the boy’s father and his uncle and went fishing in the harbour at Gravelines, a coastal municipality that is close to France's border with Belgium. They were at the harbour, in an area where swimming is prohibited.
The missing boy and his two siblings were in an inflatable rubber dingy. However, they fell into the sea. The boat had had drifted some distance from the shore.
The emergency services were alerted and large scale search and rescue operation was mounted. This included the deployment of a helicopter. Two children, aged 10 and 13, managed to get themselves to safety and were taken to hospital in Dunkirk hospital with minor injuries.
A third child is still missing. The search for the boy was called off after more than three hours.