Around 400 migrants attempted to storm the French border from Italy Monday night as police employed tear gas near the Italian town of Ventimiglia.
Police say that the migrants, who had come mostly from Sudan originally, had trekked around seven miles from the small town to the border in the middle of the night. Italian police later confronted the mob of migrants who were said to be attempting to cross through into France using a nearby river La Stampa reports.
The migrant march was precipitated by the attempted evacuation of a makeshift migrant camp that had emerged in Ventimiglia on the banks of the river Roja.
“France, France, go France, no Italy, no Italia, go France,” one migrant shouted as he attempted to cross the border.
After several hours police were able to get control over the situation and rounded up the migrants who will likely be sent to migrant centres elsewhere in Italy.
The incident is similar to several incidents which have occurred in the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Recently Secretary of State for Security José Antonio Nieto warned that the situation in Ceuta had become dangerous as migrants were attacking police with sticks, iron bars and wire cutters.
The Ventimiglia migrant camp has been dubbed the “Calais Jungle” of Northern Italy, a reference to the infamous camp in northern France where migrants recently caused the death of a Polish national.
The men, all from Eritrea, put logs on the motorway which caused one lorry to slam on its brakes. The sudden stop led to a collision with another truck which burst into flames, killing the driver.
The migrants, who were headed for France, would have likely ended up in one of the makeshift migrant camps in Paris like the Porte De La Chapelle camp in the north of the city.
Breitbart London visited the Paris camp last month and found that many of the migrants had come through Italy after leaving across the Mediterranean from North Africa.
The migrants blamed Europe and Europeans for their problems saying they wouldn’t be in France if Europe hadn’t “ruined” their countries.