Chaos as stowaways take a stroll on hard shoulder
OBLIVIOUS to the chaos they are causing, two exhausted migrants amble down the hard shoulder of a motorway.
Flashing signs instructed drivers to slow down after the two men were spotted looking dishevelled and disorientated on the M1.
They are thought to be Kuwaitis in their 20s or 30s who risked their lives by hiding under a lorry as it crossed the Channel and headed north.
But after reaching Junction 12, the pair realised they were heading away from London and decided to turn back.
After reaching the Toddington service station in Bedfordshire, they began begging drivers for water, before being arrested by police.
The incident on Thursday comes in the same week that Calais descended into chaos as the Channel Tunnel was shut and migrants exploited a wildcat strike by French ferry workers.
As protesters burned tyres and hay bales, causing gridlock on the roads, migrants tried to climb on board slowmoving and stationary lorries.
Cross-Channel services have now resumed but the Department for Transport warned travellers to check before embarking on journeys because there ‘ may be further travel disruption at short notice’.
In the UK, police revealed an explosion of up to 200 per cent in the number of stowaway migrants making it to Britain.
The figure is being seen as an indication that the Mediterranean boat crisis has now reached the UK. It also cast significant doubt on Home Office claims that ‘ 100 per cent’ of freight traffic from northern French ports to Dover is being checked by search teams. The most startling numbers were released by Bedfordshire Police, which covers the Toddington service station on the M1.
The force said officers detained an average of 23 stowaways a month in 2014. But in May this year, as the Mediterranean boat migrants poured across Europe from Italy, the total leapt to 67.
Full figures for June were not yet available but 36 stowaways were detected in just two days last week,
On Wednesday seven people from Sudan and Eritrea were arrested on suspicion of immigration offences near Toddington.
In a separate incident, a lorry driver alerted police to sounds in the back of his vehicle in Luton. Two boys from Eritrea aged 14 and 16 were detained and are now in the care of the local authority. And Kent police, which covers the ports of Dover and Folkestone, confirmed that ten migrants were found in the back of a lorry in a truck park on Wednesday.
Yesterday morning an Eritrean migrant died on the French side of the Channel Tunnel after trying to board a moving freight train, according to reports in French newspaper Le Parisien. Meanwhile Philippe Mignonet, deputy mayor of Calais, demanded that David Cameron hold a crisis summit in the town.
Addressing the Prime Minister directly, he said: ‘You are making Anglophobia grow in Calais and you will have more and more critics about your policy.
‘You now give the impression of being blind and hypocritical.’