Eurotunnel sees third successive night of migrant ‘assault’

BEARDSLEY: French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said today that he was sending police reinforcements to Calais.

That compared to an estimated 1,500 attempts by migrants to enter the tunnel on Tuesday night and 2,000 on Monday.

ONE man dies in a desperate attempt to reach England via the Channel Tunnel as overwhelmed authorities fought off hundreds of migrants, prompting France to beef up its police presence. The man found dead is described as Sudanese and aged between 25 and 30.

One man in his mid-20s from Sudan was crushed to death by a truck as he tried to reach the tunnel on Wednesday.

Freight and passenger traffic through the rail tunnel has been severely disrupted as migrants camped out in shantytowns in the Calais area have repeatedly tried to board trucks and trains traveling from France to Britain.

Meanwhile, a 16-year-old Egyptian youth is in a critical condition in hospital in Paris after being electrocuted on the roof of a Eurostar train leaving the Gare du Nord.

Migrants have continued to press northward, fleeing war, dictatorship and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

French media said he was the ninth migrant to be killed in the crisis since early June.

Britain is also deploying high-security fencing used during the Olympic Games and last year’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit at the port to stop illegal migrants breaking into lorries bound for the UK. “I am not going to England for the money”.

“We’re working very closely with the French”, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday while on an official visit to Singapore.

Migrants picked up by authorities are mostly released immediately, leading to multiple crossing attempts the same day – and to accusations by some British officials of laxity and ineffectiveness on the part of French police.

For several weeks, there have been many attempts by migrants to enter the Eurotunnel premises, with the number of people trying to grow significantly in recent days.

“The nightly pressure is more than what a concession-holder can reasonably handle”, it said, calling on Britain and France to act. It’s not clear how many have successfully made the 35-minute journey to Britain, but Eurotunnel said it had blocked more than 37,000 attempts since January.

BEARDSLEY: As Britain, France and the tunnel management trade accusations about whose responsibility it is to keep the migrants from blocking access to the tunnel and creating problems for truckers and tourists, the migrants in Calais are living in squalid conditions and fighting for a better future.

He died on Tuesday from his injuries, said a local prosecutor.

The escalating crisis has caused travel chaos on either side of the Channel and led to calls for the Army to be sent in to tackle the emergency.

“From Theresa May down, we are trying to get some help and support to manage this crisis”, he said.

Britain has agreed up to 7 million pounds ($11 million) of extra funding to help increase security at the tunnel’s French terminal at Coquelles, officials said.

Asked why British taxpayers should be paying for a problem taking place on French soil, she said: “We have juxtaposed controls at the border”.

Numerous migrants disembarking in Italy on Wednesday were families, said Giovanna De Benedetto, spokeswoman for Save the Children in the port of Messina.