France begins bulldozing part of 'Jungle' refugee camp. Tear gas fired at Greece- FYROM [***] border

French authorities began bulldozing half of the "Jungle" migrant camp in the northern port city of Calais on Monday, AFP reporters at the scene said.

Two bulldozers and around 20 workers began destroying makeshift shacks, with 30 police cars and two anti-riot vans stationed nearby.

The situation was mostly calm, although one member of the British "No Borders" activist group was arrested.

"We are carrying out our orders so that the migrants leave the camp and we will continue this work this morning... so that the destruction work can continue calmly and that the migrants are not under pressure from the No Borders activists," said local authority head Fabienne Buccio.

She accused No Borders activists of threatening workers on Friday, a day after a French court had given the green light to clear the southern half of the camp.

Buccio said three-quarters of the shacks in the southern half of the camp were now empty after migrants were encouraged to leave in recent days.

Activists had appealed to the court to stop the evacuation of the Jungle, a grim shantytown on the outskirts of Calais where thousands of migrants and refugees have gathered in the hope of sneaking aboard lorries and ferries to Britain.

• No forced evacuations                 

Local authorities, who have promised that no one will be evacuated by force, say 3,700 people live in the camp, and that between 800 and 1,000 will be affected by the eviction.

But charities say a recent census they conducted counted at least 3,450 people in the southern part alone, including 300 unaccompanied children.

The evicted migrants have been offered heated accommodation in refitted containers set up next door to the camp, but many are reluctant to move there because they lack communal spaces and movement is restricted.

They have also been offered places in some 100 reception centres dotted around France.

The migrants in Calais make up a tiny fraction of those fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

They try to climb on to lorries boarding ferries for Britain, which they are drawn to by family or community ties, because of a shared language, or because they think they have a greater chance of finding work there.

• Tear gas fired at Greece-FYROM [***] border

Meanwhile, hundreds of refugees on Monday tried to break through a border fence into FYROM [***] from Greece where more than 6,000 people are stranded, as Germany lashed out at EU states for abandoning Greece to refugee chaos.

FYROM [***] police fired tear gas as a group of some 300 Iraqi and Syrian protesters forced their way through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway track where they tried to get through the barbed wire marking the frontier between the two countries, an AFP correspondent said.

"Open the borders!" they shouted, prompting police to fire volleys of tear gas which prevented them from crossing.

The angry protest took place several hours after FYROM [***] allowed some 300 Syrians and Iraqis to cross before resealing the frontier, keeping thousands of others out.

With Austria and Balkan states capping the numbers of migrants entering their territory, there has been a swift buildup along the Greece-FYROM [***] border with Athens warning that the number of people "trapped" on its soil could reach as many as 70,000 by next month.

As the bottleneck showed little sign of easing, German Chancellor Angel Merkel lashed out at a raft of restrictions imposed by Austria and the Balkan states, saying they risked plunging debt-ridden Greece into refugee chaos.

"We can't just abandon this country," she said in an interview late on Sunday, pointing the finger at Austria, whose introduction of restrictions on February 19 triggered a domino effect.

"When one insists on his border, the other suffers. That's not my Europe."
  [i24news.tv]
29/2/16
 ***[After the necessary corrections with the name "FYROM"]

***[GREECE recognized this country with the name "FYROM"]
***[UN  resolution A/RES/47/225 of 8 April 1993]
***El Kratos uses the recognized name FYROM.
By using El Kratos, you agree to the U.N. Charter in this issue.
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Related:

• Greece activates Plan B to address refugee emergency 

• Ex República Yugoslava de Macedonia (ERYM/FYROM) reabre su frontera a inmigrantes sirios e iraquíes 

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• Belgium turns back migrants at border drawing French ire 

• Belgium on Tuesday said it had temporarily reintroduced border controls with France to halt the arrival of migrants from the Calais "Jungle" camp, in a new blow to the EU's passport-free travel area...