Victim, understood to be Jess Wilkes, 27, was flung from boat as it travelled on Rhone river near city of Avignon on Saturday night

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Tributes have been paid to a British mother killed in a boat accident in southern France.

The victim, understood to be Jess Wilkes, 27, was flung from the craft as it travelled on the Rhone near the city of Avignon on Saturday night.

Four other people were injured, including two seriously, when the boat the group were in struck a warning beacon, a French official told the Associated Press.

Wilkes, from Lamberhurst, Kent, is said to have spent the evening with friends at a restaurant on Barthelasse, an island on the river, and the boat was travelling back to Avignon.

Local officials have launched an investigation into the incident as Wilkes’s family and friends paid tribute to her.

Wilkes’s brother, Philip Wilkes, 25, told the Sun his sister was “larger than life and loved by her family”.

Meanwhile her father, Bernard Wilkes, 72, said they “want answers” over the death of his “beautiful young girl who lived life to the full”.

He told the newspaper Wilkes, who celebrated turning 27 earlier in October, had a seven-year-old daughter.

Meanwhile a friend wrote on Facebook that “no word can describe this awful pain in my heart” over Wilkes’s death.

They added: “I just wish I could be a better friend. Goodbye my twin, see you one day. Keep shining with your immense light in the sky.”