The migrant boat on which five people died was chaotic, overloaded and packed with people carrying weapons and fighting, according to one of the passengers who was on board, speaking exclusively to Sky News.
Heivin, 18, confirmed that the boat was attacked by a rival group of migrants, armed with clubs and knives, as it was preparing to set sail.
She said: “People were fighting, trampled, dying and being thrown.”
She said she fell into the water but was pulled out by another person in the boat. Two other passengers who fell into the water, including a girl, drowned. Three other people died on the boat.
Heivin said he “really hated” the group of people who hijacked his ship, insisting that they should take the blame for what happened.
“They caused a huge tragedy,” he said.
“It was because of him that people died.
“If they hadn’t come and started fighting, none of this would have happened.”
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The tragedy occurred in the early hours of Tuesday morning in waters off the French coastal town of Wimereux.
The ship, which set sail with 112 people on board, stopped on a sandbar a few hundred meters from the shore.
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Five people die after an immigrant boat is ‘kidnapped’
When the emergency services arrived, it was clear that people had died, both on the boat and in the water.
“I fell into the water but a man helped me up,” Heivin said.
“Everyone was coming on board and there were too many people – more than 110 of us.
“I had tried to be in front, but after falling into the water I sat on the edge of the boat and didn’t go to the other end, that’s where people were fighting.
“I thank God I didn’t go to the top of the boat. I would have suffocated. I thank God for that every day.”
These men ran towards the ship.
He said his group, made up of between 50 and 60 people, had arrived at Wimereux beach after following the instructions of people smugglers who had received their money in exchange for passage to Britain.
Hidden, they had waited for the smugglers to prepare the boat. Then he saw the police officers and they told him to just run into the water.
At that moment, the rival group emerged as well, boarding the ship along with the people who had paid the smugglers.
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Heivin said he saw immigrants from this group carrying sticks and knives, confronting both the police and the original passengers.
When the ship set sail, exceptionally overloaded, it meandered towards the English Channel, but there was still fighting and it is clear that some people were being crushed.
“I knew there was a fight,” Heivin said.
“They were shouting that there were people trapped under other people, that they couldn’t get out, that some were falling under people’s feet.”
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Heivin has spent seven months traveling in Europe since leaving Iraq. She said she wanted to come to Britain because “it’s a better country for me, definitely in terms of language but also, in many other ways, it’s better than the rest of Europe.”
He has made 30 attempts to cross the English Channel, but has failed in all of them. Sometimes it has been the French police that have destroyed boats and other times the boat he was traveling on has broken down. Once, the ship failed just an hour outside British waters.
However, he is undeterred by the trauma he suffered and intends to try again to reach Britain as soon as possible. “Maybe this weekend,” she said.