500 migrants attempt to enter Eurotunnel

Numerous migrants originate from Syria and Iraq, where people say they are trying to escape the four-year civil war, starvation and human rights abuses.

“A number of people have come through”, Home Secretary Theresa May said following an emergency cabinet meeting, after 1,500 attempts were made by migrants overnight to breach Channel Tunnel fencing in Coquelles in northeastern France.

Cazeneuve told the media that reinforced fencing is being put in place around the terminal and that an additional 120 French police had been dispatched to the scene where 260 security officers are already on patrol. They are mainly from Africa and the Middle East, as regional conflicts are forcing more and more people to flee their homelands. When I visited Calais last month, I met 20-year-old Pakistani student Omar Shaktar hanging around a line of waiting trucks, looking for a chance to get on one.

The man is the tenth migrant to be killed trying to cross over to the UK, after a Sudanese man was crushed to death by a lorry while trying to storm the Eurotunnel. Observers say their push to enter the 50-kilometer undersea tunnel intensified in recent weeks after authorities stepped up port security to block migrants from stowing away on Britain-bound vessels. It said the pressure on the terminal every night was more than it could reasonably handle and Britain and France should act.

“The government is clear that we must break the link between people making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean and achieving settlement in Europe”, she told parliament.

“We heard that one guy died and we know it’s very risky, but there is not another way to go the UK”, he said.

“The migrants’ strategy is simple”, said Bruno Noel from the police union Alliance.

The British government has agreed to provide an extra 7 million pounds ($11 million) of funding for measures to improve security at Calais.

The French ferry strike, which has shut down the Port of Calais for more than three days, is said to be costing the UK £250m a day.

Speaking at London in lieu of the Calais Crisis, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, placed the blame on Eurotunnel for the surge of problems at the freight terminal. British authorities said they had agreed with the French to work together on returning the migrants to their countries of origin, particularly in West Africa, although no details were given about how this would work.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday expressed concern over Monday’s incident. “The intensity and the desperate efforts of those who want to get to Britain, and we understand why they do, is becoming more and more severe”, he said.

Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, called for French troops to be deployed, adding that the situation was “obviously now beyond the capabilities of the French police”.