French police said they had prevented more than 1,000 desperate attempts by migrants to get into Britain via the Channel Tunnel on Friday, as london readied emergency talks on the crisis.
“More than 1,000 attempts were thwarted last night, with around 30 arrests,” the source said, adding there were no reports of migrants injured in their bid to enter the undersea tunnel linking France and Britain. Police reinforcements appeared to be having an impact, as the number of nightly attempts to penetrate the Eurotunnel premises has roughly halved since its peak at the beginning of the week.
France has sent 120 additional police officers to the northern port city of Calais to stem the crisis, as the number of deaths since June reached 10. One man died in the early hours of Wednesday, apparently crushed by a lorry as he tried to make it into the tunnel. A spokesman for Eurotunnel said there had been “much less disruption” since the reinforcements arrived to bolster the 300-strong police contingent already stationed in city.