100 UK-Bound Migrants Brawl in France

Around a hundred UK-bound Eritrean and Sudanese migrants have engaged in a territorial brawl near a service station in northern France.

Six people required treatment for their injuries after the battle but no arrests were made.

The fight occurred at a motorway rest area where lorries frequently stop off on their way to Britain, making it a strategically important area for people smugglers and illegal migrants.

The service station sits in Steenvoorde, a northern French town located around 25 miles from the Grande-Synthe migrant camp which is currently home to thousands of undocumented migrants.

The station manager raised the alarm at around 8.45 on Wednesday night, a source told AFP.

“It was a brawl between Sudanese and Eritrean migrants involving a hundred people”, she said, describing it as a fight for “control of the territory”.

“When the police arrived, the migrants scattered in the woods and there were no arrests,” the source added. Officers were in control of the situation by 23.15pm, Le Figaro reports.

Une centaine de migrants se sont battus à la station-service sur le bord de l’A25 #steenvoorde #saintlaurent #crs https://t.co/mLmC9MEvTe

— Indicateur Flandres (@indicflandres) February 13, 2017

A makeshift camp in Steenvoorde, housing around 60 illegal migrants, was dismantled on the 11th July, with three smugglers arrested in the operation.

Another smaller camp was then dismantled in the area at the end of November, just a month after the notorious “Jungle” of Calais was cleared.

Many of the migrants moved on from Calais refused to go into asylum facilities as they wished to travel illegally to the UK. Instead, they moved to camps such as Steenvoorde which is just 50 miles away.

The Calais camp was finally dismantled after its population surged to more than 10,000 during the summer of 2016 and the number of violent incidents at the site also shot up.

Police declared parts of Calais “no go zones” after dark, with migrants causing vehicles to crash, leaving logs on the road, throwing rocks off bridges, and setting fire to undergrowth.

Drivers were also attacked, beaten with bats, stabbed, and even threatened with chainsaws.