‘Like a war’: Calais residents terrified over 3rd night of clashes between police & migrants
RT.com
11 Nov, 2015
French police have used teargas and water cannon on migrants during clashes in the infamous Jungle refugee camp in French port of Calais on Tuesday night. Tensions on previous nights led to dozens of injured officers.
“Two hundred and fifty police officers, of which the majority were CRS [riot police], were mobilized Tuesday” to end the disturbances around the migrant camp, said Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet, as cited by AFP.
The most violent clashes took place on Sunday night. At least 26 officers were injured in stand-off with refugees who were throwing rocks at them, Gilles Debove, from the Calais branch of the SGP Police-Force Ouvrière union told the Local.
“This is the first time that it has been so violent and that we’ve had so many injured colleagues, unfortunately,” he said. “The problem is you can’t predict what will happen here. We work from day to day.”
AP, however, said that 27 officers were injured in clashes, with 11 on early Tuesday. France TV reported 28 injured police.
According to aid workers and volunteers at the camp, police fired tear gas at refugees who were throwing rocks at them.
“Police came into the camp, halfway up the main drag, and fired tear gas right into the camp,” Rowan Farrell, a volunteer from Manchester, England, told AP. “There’s more and more desperation in the camp coming to a climax.”
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