French police and migrants clash near Calais Jungle camp

French police fired tear gas and water cannon at migrants and protesters who gathered in defiance of a ban on Saturday outside the shanty town near Calais known as "the Jungle", local authorities said.

About 200 migrants and some 50 protesters assembled under a bridge to protest against living conditions in the nearby camp that President Francois Hollande has vowed to close by the end of the year.

Police clashed with migrants as they pushed them back to the camp while activists threw stones at the security forces, slightly injuring three officers. An AFP photographer was also injured.

Resorting to tear gas and water cannon, police brought the situation under control in 20 minutes, said Etienne Desplanques, an official of the Pas-de-Calais region.

Thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty, from Afghanistan to Syria, have converged on Calais over the past two years.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 migrants are currently living in the "Jungle," a launchpad for people's desperate attempts to stow away on lorries heading across the Channel to England.

Another 150 protesters who left Paris on Saturday aboard four coaches were blocked by police at a toll road about 30km short of the northern port.

The number of unaccompanied children in the camp has been steadily growing, according to aid groups.

Elaine Ortiz of the Hummingbord Project which works with unaccompanied minors in the camp, told MEE that 50 unaccompanied girls had recently arrived at the Jungle: “There’s been a recent influx of new arrivals to the camp from Sudan, Eritrea. Among them were quite a lot of young girls.”

A Refugee Support aid group spokesperson, who works inside the Jungle, said there were 1022 unaccompanied children in Calais, of whom 387 were legally entitled to be in the UK. “These children must be protected before the camp is razed. We lost 129 [children] when the cleared the southern part of the Jungle,” said a Facebook post.

The eviction of the remainder of the camp is planned for 31 October, according to Ortiz.

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French police and migrants clash near Calais Jungle camp

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