French police clear migrant camp

Paris, 22 Sept-(ANA)-French police have begun clearing hundreds of mainly Afghan immigrants from a makeshift camp known as "the jungle" near the port town of Calais.

About a dozen vehicles carrying riot police arrived at the site on Tuesday morning and began moving the migrants to detention centres.

The move to take down the makeshift housing around the port is designed to halt migrants without papers from getting into Britain, and to crack down on smuggling networks that assist them, officials said.

The illegal camp is expected to be demolished by the end of the week.

One resident, Bashir, a 24-year-old English teacher from northern Afghanistan, told the AFP news agency he had paid $15,000 (€10,000) to travel to Europe through Pakistan and Istanbul.

He said: "We have no idea what the police will do, if they will take us or let us go free.

"But here we already made our place. We have our houses, our showers and our mosque," he added.

Juma, a 25-year-old from the Baglan region of Afghanistan who arrived in the camp last month after he was evicted from a migrant camp in a Paris park, said: "This is our home now.

"We have nowhere else to go. We spent everything we had getting here and have no way to leave."

William Spindler, spokesman for the UN refugee agency in France, told Al Jazeera he believes the immigrants should be allowed to claim asylum in France.(ANA)

FA/ANA/22 September 2009---