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EU migrants: Calais Jungle protest causes huge disruption
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EU migrants: Calais Jungle protest causes huge disruption

A blockade of lorries in conjunction with a human chain on the roads around the French port of Calais is causing severe disruption on the roads.

The protesters are demanding the closure of the "Jungle" migrant camp.

Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart has joined demonstrators who argue the camp undermines the town and causes disruption at the port.

More than 7,000 people now live there, in squalid conditions. Many of them try to jump on lorries to reach Britain.

Monday's protest is likely to be the largest local people have held against the Jungle.


 Hundreds of people have gathered to form a human chain 


 Farmers are also participating in the protest 


 Protesters are walking along the motorway 


 Lorry drivers began their protest by driving slowly along dual carriageways and motorways 


Ms Bouchart says the situation is becoming unbearable.

Those living in the camp, who are mainly from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, hope to cross the Channel, often using people traffickers to try to enter illegally.

French shopkeepers, police, unionists and farmers joined hauliers in staging the blockade on the motorway near the port.

Trucks and tractors from Dunkirk and from Boulogne began the protest early on Monday morning on the A16, which runs along the edge of Calais. 



They are converging near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel and ferry terminals.

A human chain has also been formed across the road leading to the ferry port, near the Stade de l'Epopee football stadium.

Protesters are walking along the motorway holding banners and placards..

Unaccompanied children

Earlier this year, demolition teams dismantled huts in the camp as part of an effort to close it down. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Sunday that the government still intended to shut the camp. Last week the UK and France pledged to work together, increasing security at the port of Calais, improving the humanitarian situation for the thousands of homeless people there, and returning illegal migrants who were judged not to be in need of protection to the countries they came from. A few days later, campaigners said they had identified nearly 400 unaccompanied children in the camp who were eligible to move to the UK. They urged the UK government to take those children in. The UK has already committed to giving 150 children a home in 2016. One Sudanese asylum seeker inside the camp told the BBC he was saddened by the way local people viewed them, and said all the migrants wanted was to live in peace after escaping from conflict.

Source: BBC

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