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October 28, 2016

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French ‘jungle’ refugee children stuck in limbo

DOZENS of migrants stranded in the Calais “Jungle” refugee camp, some of them children, desperately sought a way out yesterday as diggers begin tearing down the last remaining shelters in the burnt-out camp in northern France.

A day after the official operation to evict the migrants came to a dramatic end, with fires ripping through the shantytown, around 100 people were still waiting to know their fate.

The interior ministry said on Wednesday that nearly 5,600 migrants had been taken into shelters around France or accepted into Britain — out of the 6,400 estimated by authorities to have been living in the camp up until this week.

Officials hailed the operation as a success, saying the informal part of the camp was now empty.

But scores of migrants were left behind, some of whom slept in the biting cold, huddled together in sleeping bags. Others camped out in the hangar where migrants were registered this week for relocation.

Yesterday, dozens of people gathered outside the registration center hoping to be given a ticket out.

“I spent the entire night here!” a young Afghan said. “I am in the queue for minors to go to England. I have family there.”

Regional security chief Fabienne Buccio said those left in the camp had come from “Germany, Paris and elsewhere” and that registrations for transfer to other parts of France had closed.

Denouncing the situation, the Save the Children charity said “the situation for children in Calais after the demolition is the worst it’s ever been” and that some children “had nowhere to go.”

But the head of the French immigration office said that 10 buses were on standby to take those left to shelter. “It’s our final offer,” Didier Leschi said.

Some 1,500 children are being housed temporarily in an on-site park of specially fitted shipping containers, which is now full.

As the clean-up began, a mechanical digger and other machines tore into makeshift shelters to clear up the settlement.

Some shacks in the slum outside the port of Calais — long a launchpad for attempts to sneak across the Channel to Britain — were still smouldering from the fires started the day before.

Buccio claimed on Wednesday a “page has been turned” for the camp, which was a magnet for migrants hoping to sneak onto lorries or trains heading across the Channel to England.

But the fate of unaccompanied minors — the cause of a bitter blame game between Paris and London — remained uncertain.




 

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