Refugee camp blaze leaves 1,400 people without shelter
Authorities in France are in a race against time to find accomodation for around 1,400 migrants after a camp was destroyed by fire.
ADVERTISEMENTMigrants evacuate a camp of closely-packed wooden huts at Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk, France, as a huge fire reduces it to ashes pic.twitter.com/T4u4DooIPQ
— AFP news agency (@AFP) April 11, 2017
The blaze started during a fight between Kurds and Afghans at the Grande-Synthe camp, near the port of Dunkirk.
At least ten people were injured, six with knife wounds.
The mayor of Grande-Synthe is Damien Careme:“The camp was not built to last and we need solutions. Some places have been made availiable, but we need more. We responded to a humanitarian emergency and the camp reached its limit and now it’s 80 percent destroyed. So we need places to stay after what happened last night.”
Dunkirk Grande-Synthe refugee camp burns to the ground https://t.co/lgOvXcGcP7pic.twitter.com/dy4nccVfr7
— Huffington Post UK (@HuffPostUK) April 11, 2017
There have been a number of violent incidents at the camp after more Afghans arrived and increased tensions with the Kurds.