Armed French police have broken up a makeshift migrant camp outside Dunkirk where the 27 people who died at sea last week stayed before they drowned in the Channel, reports the Guardian.
The basic site, by a canal outside the Grand-Smythe suburb, had no toilets or running water, but was nevertheless used by several hundred people, mostly Kurds from Iraq or Iran, hoping to travel illegally to the UK.
Photographs showed police in hazmat suits dismantling the site on Tuesday, a collection of tents and tarpaulins strapped between poles, with armed officers standing guard. Tents and unclaimed belongings were being picked up and thrown away in lorries.
The occupants, mostly men but also some families with children, will be dispersed to processing centres around the country in an attempt to remove them from northern France. However, many are likely to come back within days to try to cross the Channel again because they do not want to stay in the country.
Last week the Guardian spoke to several English-speaking migrants who said they had returned as soon as they could. Karwan Tahir, an Iraqi Kurd from Sulaymaniyah, who had lived in Britain prior to 2006, said he had been sent to a hotel near Bordeaux but “came back on the train straight away; I got a friend to send me money for the ticket. I don’t want to be down there, I want to come to the UK.”