Police oversee dismantling of giant Calais migrant camp

Belgium has turned back more than 600 migrants at the French border since reinstating border checks over fears about the destruction of part of the Calais “Jungle” camp, police said on Monday.

Lines of police vans gathered on the perimeter of the southern section and people were prevented from going on to the site.

Police lobbed tear gas cannisters at migrants who protested as two bulldozers and around 20 workers moved in to start pulling down the shacks, some of which were set ablaze.

British volunteers condemned the response from the French authorities as it emerged that water cannon had also been sent into the site.

French authorities have offered to relocate uprooted migrants into heated containers installed last month nearby or at centers around France where they can apply for asylum.

Campaigners had called for a postponement to remove people from the slum, saying that there is not enough new accommodation for people to move to.

The authorities believe some 1,000 migrants will be affected by the eviction plan while aid agencies say the number of people living there is much higher.

She accused No Borders activists of threatening workers on Friday, a day after a French court had given the green light to clear the southern half of the camp.

Help Refugees said its own analysis revealed there were 3,455 people living in the affected area.

The current Calais jungle has existed in the port town of Calais since around 2009 and has long housed refugees and migrants from Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and elsewhere.

But British hauliers welcomed last week’s court’s judgment.

FTA officials said a solution needed to be found to protect the £89 billion worth of United Kingdom trade which passes through the cross-Channel ports annually.

Macedonian police fired tear gas as a group of some 300 Iraqi and Syrian protesters forced their way through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway track where they tried to get through the barbed wire marking the frontier between the two countries, an AFP correspondent said.

“We hope the police act proportionately, as our medics regularly treat refugees who’ve been injured, sometimes seriously, at their hands”.

Conditions in the southern sector are filthy but many residents have told the BBC that they do not want to leave.

Human rights organisation Liberty said political leaders should not be “looking away” from the plight of refugees at The Jungle, including unaccompanied children.