Migrants desperate to reach England made at least 1,500 attempts to
enter the Eurotunnel terminal overnight in the French port town of
Calais, a police source told AFP Wednesday, adding that one man was
found dead.
“Our team found a corpse this morning and the firefighters have
confirmed the death of this person,” added a Eurotunnel spokesman.
The migrant, a man of Sudanese origin believed to be aged between 25
and 30, was hit by a truck that was leaving a cross-Channel ferry, the
police source said.
The overnight attempts at storming the Eurotunnel terminal after some
2,000 bids to enter the site were recorded the night before, in what
was described as the “biggest incursion effort in the past month and a
half”.
British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday expressed concern
over the situation and said Home Secretary Theresa May would chair a
meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss the
issue.
“This is very concerning,” he told reporters during a visit to
Singapore, adding that “we are working very closely” with French
authorities to address the situation.
For
several weeks, there have been many attempts by migrants to enter the
Eurotunnel premises, with the numbers of people trying growing
significantly in recent days.
“Everything happened overnight, and at 6:00 am (0400 GMT), the police
still had quite a lot of work to do,” said the police source of the
last attempts, adding that “between 500 and 1,000 migrants” were still
around the tunnel site.
The latest fatality brings the number of migrants who died near the Channel Tunnel terminal site to nine since June.
Security at the Calais port was stepped up in mid-June, driving
migrants who previously tried to stow away on trucks that take ferries
across the Channel to try their luck smuggling through the undersea
tunnel.
According to the last official count in early July, around 3,000
migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan, were
camped out in Calais.