(AFP) French police cleared 1,800 migrants from a makeshift camp near Dunkirk on Tuesday, hoping to deter people-traffickers seeking to smuggle them across the Channel to Britain.
Hundreds of police flooded the Grande-Synthe camp at dawn to expel the migrants, most of them Iraqi Kurds, who were loaded onto dozens of buses bound for shelters.
While the infamous “Jungle” camp in nearby Calais was razed in 2016, migrants continue to head to the coast hoping to stow away on trucks travelling to Britain.
Refugees and others seeking a better life have long used the wooded, lakeside area near Dunkirk as a jumping-off point for attempted crossings, and this was the sixth such operation in five months.
