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Paris police evacuate migrant camp (again)

The Local France
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Paris police evacuate migrant camp (again)
Migrants queue to board buses during the evacuation. Photo: AFP

Paris police on Friday announced the evacuation of a migrant camp in the city's 18th arrondissement.

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The announcement comes around a month after the last evacuation of the same camp at the Porte de la Chapelle, and is the 35th such operation in the past two years.

Police began moving migrants out of the makeshift camp at around 6am on Friday morning, closing the surrounding area to traffic.

Migrants who had been staying at the camp were taken by buses to 18 sites around the Île-de-France region.

Anti-riot police were involved in the operation, however pictures from the scene appeared to show that it went smoothly, and the evacuation was completed by 9:30am.

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Anti-riot police gather migrants early on Friday morning. Photo: AFP

The last evacuation of the Porte de la Chapelle camp took place in early July, when around 2,500 people were transported to alternative locations. These included school sports halls which were empty over the summer holidays.

Before that, a police operation in May had moved around 1,000 people out of the makeshift tent camp where they had been living in squalid conditions. Earlier in the year, city authorities had installed large boulders under the flyover in an attempt to dissuade groups from settling there.

Paris became a gathering point for migrants after the closure last October of the notorious "Jungle" near Calais - a makeshift camp near the Channel coast where thousands lived in the hope of climbing aboard trucks or trains to get into Britain.

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