Will Belgium be back door to UK now security at Calais is tighter?

As armed migrants battle police...

POLICE opened fire after being ambushed by armed migrants trying to head from Belgium to Britain.

The clash puts the spotlight on a potentially major new backdoor into the UK as security is tightened at Calais – the most popular illegal route to the UK.

It came after officers outside Brussels spotted five men trying to enter a lorry at 2am yesterday.

The migrants fled, only for a gang of 15 to return armed with wooden poles to attack the six officers.

As the situation escalated at Groot-Bijgaarden lorry park, police were surrounded by 40 migrants. One officer fired a warning shot after two others were hit with weapons.

It is believed migrants based in Brussels target the lorry park – 75 miles from the Zeebrugge port – in the hope of finding UK-bound vehicles. A police source said: ‘They want to go to their El Dorado and the UK is this place for them.’

It raises concerns about whether more attention needs to be paid to the crossing between Belgian and UK as Theresa May hands France an extra £45million to bolster security at the port of Calais.

Belgian police are understood to be apprehending about 250 migrants trying to use Zeebrugge to get into the UK every month.

In 2016, Europol earmarked the port as one of Europe’s main hotspots for illegal migration. Last year the port’s chief executive called for Britain to bolster security – suggesting UK officers could be dispatched to patrol. Belgian officials say that, while violent attacks on lorry drivers had previously been concentrated on Calais, there have been a series of recent incidents indicating that migrants are turning to reckless tactics, often overseen by smuggling gangs. Peter de Waele, of the Belgian Federal Police, said: ‘ The incident is more than worrying. They used to walk for the police, now they are attacking.

‘It is clear that these people are very frustrated if their crossing to Great Britain fails or threatens to fail, especially if they have paid large sums of money to people smugglers.’

In the clash outside Brussels, police managed to arrest 16 migrants who said they were from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Officials pointed to another incident in Lille, near Antwerp, two weeks ago when two officers stopped a van holding 30 migrants from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, who then turned on the policemen.

On Thursday, migrants pounced on a lorry driver in a motorway car park at Rotselaar, just outside Brussels.

Belgian migration minister Theo Francken said action was needed to protect ‘human rights’ of drivers, adding: ‘We must continue to take action and send illegals back, otherwise there will be a real battle at our highway car parks.’

Interior minister Jan Jambon said a hard-line approach would be taken against illegal migration, warning that attacks on police would be ‘severely dealt with’.

‘Want to go to their El Dorado’