A huge fire, apparently started deliberately, tore through the Grande-Synthe refugee camp near the northern French city of Dunkirk late on Monday, reducing it to “a heap of ashes,” the regional chief said.
Firefighters said at least 10 people had been injured in the blaze at the camp, which was home to about 1,500 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds, living in closely packed wooden huts.
“There is nothing left but a heap of ashes,” Nord Prefect Michel Lalande told reporters at the scene as firefighters continued to battle the flames which were visible from several kilometers away.
“It will be impossible to put the huts back where they were before,” he said.
The fierce blaze destroyed most of the 300 huts in the camp.
The refugees were evacuated and would be rehoused in emergency accommodation, the prefect said, adding that the Dunkirk suburb of Grande-Synthe had already made two gymnasiums available.
Lalande said the blaze had been started after a fight on Monday afternoon between Afghans and Kurds at the camp that had left six injured with knife wounds.
“There must have been fires deliberately set in several different places, it is not possible otherwise. It seems that it is related to fights between Iraqis and Afghans,” said Olivier Caremelle, chief of staff of Grande-Synthe Mayor Damien Careme, an environmentalist who supported the building of the camp last year.
“What I can see for myself is that everything has burned down. There is a communal kitchen and the information point, but it’s impossible to walk through the camp and get a really accurate idea of the extent of the damage,” Caramelle said.
Fights between the refugees continued after midnight, with riot police struggling to contain them and occasionally being pelted with stones, a correspondent said.
“No one is able to explain how these events could have happened,” Lalande said.
The population of the Grande-Synthe camp has swelled since the destruction in October last year of the “Jungle” camp near Calais, about 40km away.
Disagreements arose after an increase in the number of Afghans who arrived from the “Jungle” camp, several witnesses said.
The Afghans were apparently unhappy at being put up in the communal kitchens, while the Kurds slept in chalets.
Their arrival had increased tensions, Caremelle said.
There have been several violent incidents at the Grande-Synthe camp, with police intervening last month after five men were injured in a fight. Another man was stabbed in November last year.
French officials had said in the middle of last month that security forces were planning to start dismantling the camp following clashes at the site. The camp, built by the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres, opened in March last year over the objections of the central government.
For more than a decade France’s northern coast has been a magnet for refugees and migrants trying to reach Britain, with French authorities repeatedly tearing down camps in the region.
Refugees and migrants gather along the northern coast in France seeking to break into trucks heading to Britain or pay smugglers to help them get across the English Channel.
The issue is a constant source of friction between Britain and France, and an embarrassment for the French government, which has been criticized by the UN refugee agency for failing to provide adequate accommodation.
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