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French police did nothing more than watch as a baby and toddlers were carried aboard a dinghy to England yesterday.

Dozens of migrants clambered aboard the boat in the waves as tourists enjoyed lunch on the beach.

The youngest hauled aboard was a baby who appeared to be just months old. There were a number of other youngsters and women, too, alongside many young men.

Remarkably they were boarding a small boat the French authorities had closely tracked for nine-and-a-half hours – and simply let it be – as it picked up multiple groups of passengers along the French coast.

The dinghy appears to have been launched near Dieppe at around 4am.

This is far further south than from where boats usually leave, but people-smugglers are using new launch spots away from regular police searches.

Soon after setting off it was followed by a French coastguard vessel – but only in case of a sinking.

After 40 miles it pulled in alongside Berck beach, then 12 miles further north it approached Camiers beach at around noon, where photographer Ioannis Alexopoulos saw the youngsters taken on board after groups of migrants had emerged from the dunes.

A man holds a baby in a babygrow as migrants board a dinghy at the beach at Ecault in France

Life jackets and a damaged dinghy are seen on the beach after migrants jumped to get back onto the shore

Life jackets for sale at the French sports superstore Decathlon in Dunkirk

Mr Alexopoulos said: ‘Three police turned up, gendarmes in military clothes – but all they did was film, and threaten to arrest me if I kept taking pictures.’

This comes as the Daily Mail revealed that sporting goods stores in the northern French towns of Calais and Dunkirk have become key to the operations of gangs smuggling people into Britain.

Migrants appear to be buying up lifejackets en masse from the retailers, with the flimsy, €17.99 (£15.40) garments offering little protection against the perilous crossings they are set to undertake.

This, however, is only the last step in a vast international supply chain spanning all the way to China, which is profiting off migrants' desperation, misery and suffering.