Paris
Riot police fired tear gas to end repeated clashes Tuesday among hundreds of migrants in Calais who launched their second attempt in two days to storm lorries bound for Britain.
The clashes between youths armed with sticks, rocks and knives broke out after a dispute over an alleged theft, police said.
Groups of 30 to 40 migrants were still roaming different parts of the port city last night continuing to clash with rival groups, said Gilles Debove, a police union spokesman.
The escalating violence prompted demands from local police officers for guns, according to the local newspaper, La Voix du Nord.
The 15 local officers, who deal with minor crimes and are not usually called on to deal with migrants, are to get stun guns and guns that fire rubber bullets. But they have claimed those weapons are insufficient as the migrants — who are all trying to reach Britain and frequently try to jump on lorries to cross the channel — have become increasingly violent.
The paper reported that local police wanted the same guns as the 162 armed national police and 141 CRS riot police in Calais, who are routinely deployed to control the estimated 15,000 migrants currently living in the town in makeshift camps at the side of roads and in woodland.
One officer told the newspaper: “The climate is tense... They are likely to be armed, we are not equipped to cope. We want to be equipped with weapons for our safety and the safety of citizens.”
An extra 34 riot police were sent to Calais after about 250 migrants stormed the port and tried to board ferries last month. But police say they are still struggling to cope and had to call in reinforcements from Boulogne to deal with the latest unrest.
Tuesday, a 16-year-old girl Ethiopian girl died after being hit by a car as she attempted to run across a motorway outside Calais in the early hours of the morning. She was the third migrant to die on the roads in as many weeks. Friends at the women’s refuge where she had been staying for the past two weeks were too upset to talk. Staff said she had hoped to get to Britain.
The clashes around the port Tuesday saw groups of Ethiopians and Eritreans pelt each other with rocks and stones before police were forced to break the trouble up with tear gas. Officers spent six hours on Monday night trying to contain a fight between migrants. Ten men were injured and taken to hospital.
Separately, for the second time in as many days, police fired tear gas Tuesday to stop more than 200 migrants who took advantage of a traffic jam on an access road to the port to try to force their way on to lorries heading to Britain.
On Monday, 300 migrants made a similar attempt and police said some had succeeded in boarding lorries amid the confusion. Police reinforcements were sent in and tear gas was used on a crowd of mainly young men who were taking part in a “clearly coordinated attack”.
The authorities in Calais, one of France’s poorest cities with 18 per cent unemployment, say they are overwhelmed by the migrants, most from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Afghanistan. Philippe Mignonet, the deputy mayor of Calais, said that there was a “general climate of insecurity” in the French port.
He added British and French governments needed to work together to find a lasting solution to the problem. “It’s time to show the political courage to work out a solution together,” Mignonet said. “David Cameron [Britain’s Prime Minister] should come and see for himself what we’re being subjected to. This is a humanitarian catastrophe.”
— The Daily Telegraph
