At least fifteen French police officers were injured Thursday morning after they attempted to clear a makeshift migrant camp and met physical resistance from the migrants living in the camp.
The clashes between the police and the migrants took place at around 9:20 am on Thursday as around 40 officers made an attempt to clear the makeshift camp where around a hundred migrants were camping near a local railway track.
As police attempted to remove the tents from the camp, the migrants pushed back, attacking the officers, forcing them back with projectiles, which saw the officers briefly retreat, the local newspaper Le Voix Du Nord reports.
Following the violent clashes, 15 CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité) officers were injured and were taken to a local hospital with the aid of the local fire brigade. Officers were treated for various injuries, including one suffering from a bone fracture. Three migrants were also injured and were taken to an emergency room.
Fabrice Ledoux, of the national CFE GC police union, condemned the incident, saying that it was “an intolerable wave of violence. I hope for identification and conviction of the perpetrators.”
Pierre-Henri Dumont, a local MP and member of the conservative Les Republicains added, “These scenes of war, in the immediate vicinity of homes, have no place here and are intolerable. They are partly the consequence of the lax approach of the government, which refuses to implement my proposal to forcibly send migrants in Calais to reception and examination centres far from the coast.”
Dumont went on to blame local pro-migrant groups for indirectly encouraging the violence and said that the groups continue to distribute food in the area despite a government ban.
The clearing of the camp comes just weeks after a camp of 400 migrants was cleared in Grande-Synthne near the city of Dunkirk and several weeks after another camp of 1,500 was cleared in the same area on the order of French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
Migrants in Calais have also caused problems for motorists, particularly lorry drivers whose vehicles are targets for migrants sneak into in order to smuggle themselves into the UK.
On the 19th of December, a Portuguese lorry driver died after a violent confrontation involving three migrants who attempted to break into his lorry. The driver is said to have confronted the migrants, who attacked him and later died of a heart attack around five minutes later.