Photos: Police clear out largest migrant camp in Paris
In France, much of the migrant influx since 2015 ended up in Calais, where a giant slum was cleared by the authorities in late 2016. Most of the rest have gathered in Paris and the southeast near the Franco-Italian border. On Wednesday, police cleared the city’s largest tent camp, in the government's latest attempt to deal with the influx. At the Millenaire camp, riot police flanked migrants as they boarded buses to temporary housing around the city. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said some 1,000 migrants out of the 1,600 counted on site had been evacuated.
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A migrant sits in his tent during the evacuation of the makeshift Millennaire tent camp in Paris, France on May 30, 2018. Police cleared out about 1,000 people from the largest makeshift migrant camp, on the city’s edge alongside a canal used by joggers and cyclists, in the French capital, which became a focal point in France’s immigration debate. (Thibault Camus / AP)
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The encampment held at least 1,400 migrants, local officials have said, but 1,016 were cleared out, put in buses and taken to gymnasiums in the region. Several hundred migrants apparently fled before the evacuation. (Benoit Tessier / REUTERS)
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While they were being moved out, bulldozers ripped through the migrants’ tents. Two migrants drowned this month in canals along encampments and others have been injured amid rising tensions in the filthy, crowded camps, adding pressure on authorities to act. But the evacuation was delayed for months amid bickering over what to do with the settlers. (Benoit Tessier / REUTERS)
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A toothbrush is seen on the ground near tents after the evacuation. Two other makeshift camps in Paris holding some 1,000 migrants are expected to be cleared next week. “To stay one month here is very, very, very bad for me. All the people have sicknesses and don’t have food,” said Farouk Ahmed from Sudan. (Benoit Tessier / REUTERS)
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