Huge Fire Sweeps Through French Migrant Camp
MEP: A huge fire, apparently started deliberately, reduced the Grande-Synthe migrant camp near the northern French city of Dunkirk, to “a heap of ashes”, according to officials.
At least 10 people were injured when the fire tore through closely-packed huts at the camp, firefighters said.
The camp was home to between 1,000 and 1,500 people, humanitarian groups said, living in closely packed wooden huts.
“There is nothing left but a heap of ashes,” Michel Lalande, prefect of France’s Nord region, told reporters at the scene as firefighters continued to battle the flames.
“It will be impossible to put the huts back where they were before.”
Local police were dispatched to the campsite to intervene in the Kurdish- Afghani clashes which involved up to 150 refugees. According to reports, police fired over 20 volleys of tear gas grenades in an attempt to restore order both in and outside the Grande-Synthe shelter, Le Parisien noted.
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“There must have been fires deliberately set in several different places,” said Olivier Caremelle, chief of staff of Grande-Synthe Mayor Damien Careme, an environmentalist who supported the building of the camp last year.
“It is not possible otherwise. It seems that it is related to fights between Iraqis and Afghans.”
