Migrants start leaving Calais ‘Jungle’

CALAIS

Migrants lugging their meagre belongings boarded buses taking them from the Calais “Jungle” under a French plan to raze the notorious camp that has become a symbol of Europe’s refugee crisis.

“Bye Bye, Jungle!” a group of migrants shouted as they hauled luggage through the muddy lanes of the shantytown where thousands from Africa and the Middle East had holed up, desperate to sneak into the United Kingdom.

Around 1,200 police officers — some in riot gear — were on hand as scores of Sudanese and Eritrean men queued from dawn outside a hangar to be among the first to be put on coaches for shelters across France.

“We don’t know yet where we are going, but it will obviously be better than the ‘Jungle’, which was made for animals not humans,” said Wahid, a 23-year-old Afghan.

The first coachload carrying 50 Sudanese left at 8:45am, heading for the Burgundy region of east-central France.

By noon, several hundred people were standing in line and 16 buses were already on the road.

As the crowd swelled, police intervened to break up a scuffle and prevent a stampede but the operation was generally proceeding “in a calm and orderly manner”, according to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve.

Crews will on Tuesday move in to start tearing down the camp, one of the biggest in Europe where 6,000-8,000 people, among them 1,300 children, lived for months.

Officials said they aimed to relocate up to 2,500 people on the first day and complete the operation by Wednesday evening.

Christian Salome, head of the Auberge des Migrants (Migrants’ Hostel), one of the Jungle’s leading charities, said that those who departed on Monday had been impatient to leave.