A woman has died after going overboard from a passenger ship off the Channel Islands.
The French coastguard said it received a distress message saying a woman in her 20s had gone overboard north of Les Casquets rocks, west of Alderney, shortly after midnight on Saturday. The woman went overboard from the Maltese-flagged cruise ship MSC Virtuosa.
A French navy helicopter based in Maupertus-sur-Mer was scrambled for the rescue mission. It was supported by an offshore rescue vessel from Goury along with a RNLI lifeboat from Alderney and a Channel Islands air search plane.
“Channel Islands air search were called out early this morning and requested to assist Jobourg MRCC in the search for a person overboard from the MSC Virtuosa cruise ship, north of Les Casquets,” the volunteer organisation said in a post on Facebook. “Lions’ Pride departed from Guernsey at 0200hrs and set course for the search area.”
The air search team said it was stood down after the woman was lifted from the water at about 3am local time.
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A French coastguard spokesperson said the navy helicopter had hoisted the woman from the sea and taken her to a rescue centre in Tourlaville, where a medical team had pronounced her dead.