Calais eviction begins
Fate of 1,300 unaccompanied children remains uncertain
France began clearing the sprawling "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais yesterday, with hundreds carrying suitcases queuing outside a hangar to be resettled in reception centres across the country.
The first buses departed less than an hour after immigration workers started the operation and officials predicted some 2,500 would leave on the first day.
Armed police fanned out around the warehouse and across the squalid shanty-town after a night during which small groups of migrants burned toilet blocks and hurled stones at security forces in protest at the plans to dismantle the camp.
The Socialist government says it is closing the camp, home to 6,500 migrants fleeing war and poverty, on humanitarian grounds. It plans to relocate them to 450 centres across France.
"I hope this works out. I'm alone and I just have to study," said Amadou Diallo from the West African nation of Guinea. "It doesn't matter where I end up, I don't really care."
French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that authorities had not needed to use force and that the large police presence at the camp yesterday was just for security.
Many of the migrants and refugees hail from countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea and had wanted had reach Britain.
But even as the process began, the fate of about 1,300 unaccompanied child migrants remained uncertain.
Discussions are underway with British authorities over who should take in children with no family ties in Britain, the interior ministry spokesman said, adding that 200 had left for Britain last week.
The migrants will be separated into families, adults, unaccompanied minors and vulnerable individuals, including elderly people and single women.
They will then be bussed to the reception centres where they will receive medical checks and, if they have not already done so, decide whether to apply for asylum.
Meanwhile, migrants at a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos hurled stones at police and torched seven temporary offices used by asylum officials in an hour-long protest yesterday over conditions, officials said.
Jose Carreira, executive director of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), said at least four containers where interviews were conducted were entirely destroyed, and three more were damaged.