Mother whose children were sent across Channel without her arrives in UK

Woman tells how people-smugglers launched three children, aged 14, nine and five, on dinghy and left her behind

The mother of three Eritrean children seeking asylum, who were forced to cross the Channel from northern France in a dinghy without her after smugglers separated the family, has arrived in the UK and is desperate to reunite with her children.

The woman, 31, was staying in northern France with her children in December last year, hoping to reach the UK. She paid smugglers for places on a dinghy for herself and the children, a boy aged 14 and two girls aged nine and five, to cross the Channel on 16 December.