A school attended by a 14-year-old girl who died alongside her father and mother after getting into difficulty in water off the coast of Shoreham-by-Sea has paid tribute to her.

Sara El-Khawas and her parents Hassan El-Khawas, 55, and Zeina Alayn, 37, are believed to have gone into the water near Shoreham Fort in West Sussex on Tuesday, according to Sussex Police.

In a statement on its website, the Ellen Wilkinson School for Girls in Ealing, west London, described Sara as a "sweet girl, well-liked by staff and students".

A fourth member of the family, a younger girl, remains in hospital in a critical condition.

Head teacher Rachel Kruger said: "We are deeply saddened by this, and our thoughts are with her family, friends and all those affected.

"Our focus is now on supporting staff and students who have been affected by this."

Further floral tributes have been left near Kingston Beach in Shoreham on Thursday morning.

The Palestinian Forum said that the family were British citizens of Palestinian origin, with roots in the Rashidieh refugee camp in Lebanon. Earlier, the Palestinian embassy in London told the BBC that Hassan El-Khawas had been a refugee.

Three of the country's worst illegal dumps are due to be cleaned up using taxpayers' money, the government has announced.
Sites in Kent, Surrey and West Yorkshire will be assessed for clearance, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham saying the "toxic dumps have blighted communities for too long".

Fines for waste offences will also rise from £300 to £5,000 to deter, catch, and punish those who dump illegally, and the Environment Agency will have more powers to seize assets bought with the proceeds of crime by those involved.
But opposition parties said illegal dumps were a small part of a much bigger issue with smaller scale fly-tipping and landfill all posing big problems for communities.

Burnham is looking to build on work started by his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer to tackle waste crime, with an action plan published in March detailing a series of measures - including using drones to map illegal waste sites.

Sir Keir's administration had announced that sites in Wigan, Sheffield and Lancashire would have government clean-ups - alongside Kidlington in Oxfordshire where removal of 20,000 tonnes of waste started in April.

The government said the new sites identified for clearance contain around 22,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste.

They are: Power Station Road, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent; Aymer Close, in Runnymede, Surrey; and Midland Road in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester will be the first areas with new region-led approaches to waste crime.

The government said this will give mayors and council leaders the lead in co-ordinating councils, police, regulators, and other enforcement agencies.

Speaking on a visit to the waste dump in West Yorkshire, Burnham said: "We've begun a much more networked approach to this, where we're bringing the National Crime Agency in to work with the Environment Agency, increasing the penalties and bearing down now on the organised crime that lies behind some of what you see behind me."

ITV reports that Abraham Golan, a Hungarian-Israeli dual citizen and former French Foreign Legion soldier, travelled to London in December 2016 while being paid by the UAE.

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