Keyword: camp

Displaced migrants from the destroyed Grande-Synthe camp were offered shelter inside one of the town's gymnasiums. © Reuters

A migrant camp close to the Channel port of Dunkirk, in north-east France, which housed about 1,500 people in wooden sheltered accommodation, was razed to the ground in a huge blaze on Monday that was started during fighting between groups of Iraqi Kurds and Afghans. The events have further fuelled anti-immigrant rhetoric from candidates campaigning in the French presidential elections, and placed in question the outgoing socialist government’s already reluctant support for the site. But, as Carine Fouteau reports, the local mayor behind the creation of the camp, which opened only last year, has pledged to rebuild it.

At least ten people were reported injured among the camp's more than 1,000 residents when the blaze, which broke out following fighting between Afghans and Kurds, levelled its closely packed wooden huts.

François Hollande, on the second leg of a South American tour and who is the first French president to visit Colombia in 30 years, pledged further support for the country's peace process, which it already partly funds, during a visit to a Farc rebel camp.

Following removal of Calais 'Jungle', President Hollande targets camp in capital and says such makeshift settlements are 'not worthy' of France.

Hundreds of unaccompanied minors trapped in the "Jungle" migrant shantytown in Calais, which is due to be demolished, are to be allowed entry into Britain to join relatives as French and British officials speed up the transfer process.

The 2,628 migrants who were living rough on mattresses and in tents were given temporary accomodation in gyms and a retirement home.

Around 500 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan and sheltering under an overhead metro line, were taken to accomodation centres.

One refugee group says six shelters were on fire and claims watching police prevented attempts to douse flames.

Some 1,000 migrants are to be displaced from a part of the the makeshift and insalubrious camp which the authorities will raze next week.

The £1.1 million migrant centre will be built near existing shanty town at Grande-Synthe, just five miles from the ferry port at Dunkirk.

Vue aérienne de la « new jungle » de Calais. © Reuters

The northern French port of Calais was this week the scene of violent clashes between police and migrants who continue to gather in their thousands in the hope of crossing illegally into Britain. While a recent security clampdown at the port and Channel Tunnel entrance has succeeded in reducing incursions, migrants continue to arrive in Calais and the numbers living in the infamous makeshift ‘jungle’ camp have swollen significantly. As winter approaches, the authorities are attempting to disperse the migrants, some to holding centres, others into temporary accommodation, while actively inciting them to apply for asylum in France. Carine Fouteau reports.

Une boutique dans la « New Jungle », le 16 octobre 2015 © Philippe Wojazer / Reuters

In just a year the number of migrants living in the so-called 'New Jungle' camp at Calais in north-east France waiting to get to the UK has doubled to around 6,000. The migrant question has now become a key issue in December's regional elections, with the head of the far-right Front National, Marine Le Pen, standing for the region that includes Calais. But what do the town's residents think about the migrants and their plight? As Haydée Sabéran found out, it is a complex picture.

Italian town of Ventimiglia, where a camp of around 50 people remained, was a flashpoint at start of Europe's migrant crisis earlier this year.

EU will provide €5m aid to help France build tented encampment for 1,500 people to replace existing 'jungle' of makeshift shelters.