Migrants attack police in escape from detention centre

TWENTY-SIX migrants escaped from a detention centre after overpowering Spanish police on the day the EU launched its new border force.

One man feigned illness to distract officers, leaving other migrants to attack police with fire extinguishers, injuring five.

The mob, mostly from Algeria, were some of the 70 migrants without residence permits held in the Sangonera la Verde centre near the city of Murcia in south-east Spain. Yesterday’s mutiny happened as the EU launched a new beefed-up border agency in a desperate bid to stem the migrant tide.

‘One of the foreigners first pretended to be ill, and when the ambulance came the others rose up in mutiny,’ a police spokesman said.

Meanwhile in western France, shots were fired at a centre being set up to rehouse migrants from the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais. The 50 migrants destined for the accommodation, in the seaside town of Saint Brevin, have not yet arrived. But the attack reveals the level of local opposition to the Socialist government’s plans. Critics claim the settlements across France will simply replace the Calais camp with dozens of mini-Jungles.

The new European Border and Coast Guard Agency was launched yesterday at a checkpoint in Bulgaria, on the EU’s border with Turkey. It will have more than double the staff of its predecessor and extra powers.

Libya, a key springboard for Europe-bound migrants, rejected calls from some countries to build refugee camps on its shores, saying the EU could not ‘shirk its responsibility’.

Angela Merkel has warned Britain there can be no full access to the EU’s single market without free movement of workers.

The German chancellor told business leaders in Berlin yesterday: ‘If we don’t say that full access to the single market is linked to full acceptance of freedom of movement, then a process will begin where everyone in Europe starts doing what they want.’