Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2015 12:39:57 +0200
Lille (France) (AFP) - Trucks travelling through the Channel Tunnel were hit with new delays Friday after migrants seeking to reach Britain climbed aboard a freight train, a spokesman for Eurotunnel said.
"At around 11:30 (0930 GMT) there was an alert because of the presence of migrants on a freight train," he told AFP.
"The police and security personnel carried out an inspection and removed the migrants," who had climbed aboard a train carrying trucks after entering the tunnel through at a "less secure" point.
"The tunnel is now fully reopen for commercial traffic."
He reported delays of up to one and a half hours on the British side and one hour on the French side.
The incident came the day after the French and British interior ministers, Bernard Cazeneuve and Theresa May, signed an agreement to set up a new "command and control centre" to tackle smuggling gangs in Calais, as Europe grapples with its biggest migration crisis since World War II.
Under the deal signed in Calais, British teams will help bust smuggling gangs and reduce nightly attempts by desperate migrants and refugees to break into the Channel Tunnel.
Some 3,000 people from Africa, the Middle East and Asia are camped in Calais in slum-like conditions, and at least nine have died trying to cross over into Britain, where many have family and work is thought easier to find.