French police ordered to keep guard at Calais migrant camp during mass evacuations

By Staff The Associated Press

Posted October 25, 2016 5:28 am EST

1 min read

This article is more than 7 years old and some information may not be up to date.

WATCH ABOVE: French police fired tear gas and a water cannon at some 250 migrants and demonstrators who gathered in defiance of a ban outside the Calais shanty town known as "the Jungle" to protest living conditions there – Oct 1, 2016

PARIS – French police are being deployed to keep order among the young migrants pushing barriers at Calais’ makeshift camp.

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Dozens of migrants jumped over railings Tuesday in an attempt to get to the camp’s temporary processing centre, the first step to being relocated in France.

Most identified themselves as unaccompanied minors with relatives across the English Channel in the U.K. They had made their way to the gates in the port city very early in the morning.

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France is in day two of a weeklong, 6,000-person-strong mass evacuation of the controversial slum-like migrant camp.

Hassan Ali, a 25-year-old Pakistani, said Tuesday he was “excited” to leave – and hoped to return to university and find a job in France, having been unable to get to Britain.