Desperate Migrants Rush Channel Tunnel to England

This has been going on for days now.

At London's Daily Mail, "Calais' thin blue line: Helpless French police are over-run as hundreds more migrants storm Channel Tunnel declaring 'it's England or death' - so when will Cameron finally take action?" And, "Now it's batons and tear gas in the battle of Calais: French police finally take action to try to stem the flow as migrants storm the Channel Tunnel for a FOURTH night."

Also, "TWO-THOUSAND migrants storm the Channel Tunnel in one night as riot police battle for six hours in a desperate attempt to keep them out."

Still more, "Your summer holidays have gone up in smoke: New blow to British families caught up in Calais migrant chaos as striking ferry workers block roads with burning tyres."

Plus, watch at the Telegraph UK, "Migrants break through police line in Calais."

They're like animals.

Still more at Reuters, "Calais migrants prepared to risk lives to reach Britain's shores."

And see the New York Times, "Migrants in Calais Desperately Rush the Channel Tunnel to England, Night After Night":

CALAIS, France — The sun had barely set when a 23-year-old Eritrean woman who gave her name as Akbrat fell into step with dozens of other men and women and started scaling the fence surrounding the entrance to the French side of the Channel Tunnel.

The barbed wire cut her hands, but she did not feel the pain. The police seemed to be everywhere. She thought of her 5-year-old son back in Africa and ran, zigzag through the falling shadows, once almost colliding with an officer in a helmet.

Then she was alone. She slipped under the freight train and waited, clambering out just as it began moving.

But before she could hurl herself onto the train bed transporting trucks filled with Britain-bound produce, a French officer caught up with her, she recalled in an interview on Thursday. Blinded by tear gas, she stumbled and bruised her right ankle. After being ejected from the complex around the tunnel, it took her five hours to limp the nine miles back to the refugee camp of makeshift shelters that its 3,000 inhabitants call the “jungle.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” someone told her.

“I’m not lucky,” she responded. “I’ll be lucky when I’m in England.”

The desperate scene playing out each night and day in Calais, with migrants trying to vault fences or cut their way through them and climb onto trains or into trucks going across the Channel to England, is just one chapter in a painful drama playing out across Europe.

For many of the migrants who have been coming to the Continent from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Calais, a mere 21 miles from the white cliffs of Dover, is their last stop. If they make it across to Britain, many believe they will have reached safety and a better life. Some are attracted to Britain because they speak some English, others because they see better job prospects there than on the Continent. A few even cite a strong pound.

Those who make it as far as this port city often express striking and implacable certainty about their right to go the rest of the way, having come so far.

Nursing her sprained ankle outside the tent she shares with a dozen of other men and women, Akbrat lamented the fact that she would have to rest for a few days before making another attempt. “I’ve crossed the sea and walked for many months,” she said. “I am not giving up now.”

Like others here, she declined to give her full name or have her photograph taken for fear of jeopardizing her chances of slipping across the border undetected.

Akbrat arrived in Calais five days ago. But she has spent much of her life as a refugee. When she was 13, her father was killed, a political assassination in Eritrea, she said. Her mother fled with her and her two sisters to Sudan. When her mother died seven months ago, Akbrat left her son with her aunt and began her own journey to Turkey and then across the Mediterranean to Greece. She hopes to bring her boy to Britain once she has papers and has found work, she said.

“I thought I would die on that boat,” she said. “Until I die, I will try to go to England.”

Still more.

And at the BBC, "Calais migrants crisis: Inside 'The Jungle' migrant camp."