French police, migrants clash near Calais camp
AFP
AFP, CALAIS, France: French police used tear gas and water cannon to put down violent clashes with migrants and activists who attempted to hold a banned rally beside the squalid Jungle camp in Calais on Saturday, regional authorities said.
The confrontation, the worst since February, lasted some three hours and three police officers were slightly injured from stones hurled by some of the migrants, the authorities in the northern French town said.
But police union official Gilles Debove reported 10 officers hurt, including one who was hospitalised, and seven police vehicles damaged.
An AFP photographer said he was also slightly injured from the stone-throwing.
Tensions mounted in the Jungle, set to be closed by winter, after a demonstration planned Saturday by a group working with migrants was banned by local authorities.
Then on Saturday afternoon, 200 people, mainly from the No Borders group and migrants gathered in front of the CRS (riot police) on the outskirts of the camp, said Etienne Desplanques, an official of the Pas-de-Calais region.
Since the gathering was banned, police sought to push the protesters back inside the camp, he said.
The masked migrants and activists, many of them British, began throwing stones and other objects at police.
