A refugee child is helped by a border officer at the English Channel. (File photo)

France says its coastal guards rescued forty people from a distressed vessel at sea in the Channel near the northern town of Calais after they had set off on a boat to cross into Britain.

The French channel coast prefecture in a statement on Monday said the group was saved on the intervening night of December 26-27 and brought to Calais harbor.

On Sunday night, December 26, to early Monday, December 27, 2021, the regional operational center for monitoring and rescuing (CROSS), based on the Gris-Nez cape, was informed about a vessel in distress that was in the Dunkirk sector, it said in a statement.

After that, the CROSS sent a state Flamant patrolling ship of the national navy, which picked up 40 people aboard, the prefecture said in a statement published on Twitter.

The French channel coast prefecture did not specify whether the people rescued were migrants and which countries they belonged to.

It, however, issued a renewed warning to people against attempts to cross the Channel illegally.

Calais has for long been used as a launch point for refugees waiting to cross into the United Kingdom.

The number of refugees setting off into the Channel has increased in recent months, with French authorities launching a crackdown on other routes to England - including a famous route that passes through the tunnel under the Channel.

Last month, 27 migrants died when their boat capsized in the Channel while heading to Britain from France, in what was described as one of the deadliest disasters involving refugees in recent years.

Those who drowned included 17 men, seven women - one of whom was pregnant - and three children, according to French authorities. They were mostly Iraqi Kurds.

The tragedy pointed to how little has changed in the five years since the French authorities dismantled a refugee camp in the northern town and vowed to crack down on refugees trying to cross the Channel that separates the country from the UK.

Rights groups have denounced measures taken by the French police to handle the crisis, which include seizing the refugees’ tents and other belongings.

Howsoever, the refugees - from Sudan, Eritrea, Kurdistan and more recently Vietnam - remain undeterred in their plans to seek asylum in the UK.

Britain has constantly been calling on the government of French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to prevent refugees from crossing the Channel.

The two countries blame each other for the crisis, while experts say both Paris and London share responsibility for the humanitarian disaster.

Europe’s refugee crisis began in 2015, when more than 911,000 refugees and asylum seekers arrived on European shores. At least 3,550 people lost their lives on the perilous journey, according to the UN refugee agency.

Over 75 percent of those arriving in Europe had fled West-aided conflict in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Analysts believed the crisis has grappled Europe due to the West’s misguided policies in the Middle East. They accuse the US and its allies of contributing to the European refugee crisis through their military actions and defiance of international legal norms.