WIMEREUX, France >> A day after 12 migrants died when their small inflatable ripped apart on a failed effort to cross the English Channel, several dozen others made another crossing attempt on a crowded vessel from northern France on Wednesday, as French patrol boats watched it labor through the seas.

That migrants were prepared to risk their lives so soon after a dozen others lost theirs trying to cross the busy waterway from France to Britain underscored the magnitude of the problem for the French and U.K. governments. It was the deadliest accident involving a migrant boat in the English Channel this year.

The mayor of Wimereux, a French coastal town where Associated Press journalists filmed the crowded inflatable boat on Wednesday, pleaded for French and British officials to do more to limit the number of migrants attempting the often perilous journey.

“Unfortunately, every day is like this for us. The smugglers — a criminal network — continue with insistence to send people to their deaths in the channel. It really is unacceptable, scandalous. And it is high time that a lasting solution is found with Britain,” Mayor Jean-Luc Dubaële said by phone.

“Let’s ask ourselves the question: Why do they want to go to Britain? Because something is drawing them there,” he said. “They can ask for asylum in France. (But) none ask for the right to asylum in France. They all want to go to Britain. So it is high time that we sit around a table with the new British government.”

Cross-Channel migration was a key focus in the U.K. general election in July, which the Labour Party won resoundingly to make its leader, Keir Starmer, the new prime minister.

A French prosecutor investigating Tuesday’s sinking, Guirec Le Bras, said 10 of the 12 dead were women and six of the victims were minors. Many appeared to be Eritrean, he said. The inflatable boat sank about 5 kilometers (3 miles) off the French coast, he said. Maritime authorities said many aboard didn’t have life vests.

Fishermen who recovered some of the dead said they were moved to tears.

“The bodies of two women were very young. That hurt me. I cried all day. I couldn’t stop,” said 53-year-old Samba Sy Ndiaye, who works aboard the Murex, one of two fishing boats that assisted the French rescue effort.

Another crew member, Axel Baheu, said the body of one young woman — he guessed she was between 15 and 20 — had a telephone in a waterproof pouch around her neck. It started to ring as he was pulling her out of the water and checking for a pulse, he said.

“That was hard because you know full well that no one will ever answer,” Baheu said.