<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Friday, March 29, 2024
March 29, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Crews begin dismantling migrant camp in France

Immigrants taken to centers to seek asylum

By Christian Boehmer and Jessica Camille Aguirre, dpa
Published: October 25, 2016, 7:54pm

CALAIS, France — French crews began disassembling makeshift shelters Tuesday, removing tarpaulins and scrap materials that made up the so-called “Jungle” migrant camp near Calais.

On the second day of a week-long operation to remove the camp and encourage migrants gathered near the port city to stay in France, hundreds of people boarded buses to leave.

By midday, a regional spokesman said some 16 buses had left the registration center carrying more than 650 migrants to accommodation centers throughout France where they can apply for asylum.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told the lower house of parliament in the afternoon that more than 1,000 had been sheltered on Tuesday, coming after the 1,918 adults and 400 unaccompanied minors were taken from the makeshift camp on the first day of the government operation.

Migrants lined up on Tuesday morning jostled with the police, but a prefecture spokesman said there were no injuries. There were also no violent confrontations with police overnight, ahead of the second day of the operation to dismantle the migrant camp.

Cazenueve said that controls would be increased to prevent new illegal camps being built on the French coastline.

More than 100 unaccompanied minors with family in Britain have crossed the English Channel since Oct. 17, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

Government and nonprofit organization estimates put the number of people living in the migrant camp near Calais between 6,500 and 8,000.

Loading...