132 children held in raid

More than 100 children have been held by French police in a raid on a notorious immigrant camp dubbed ‘the jungle'. Refugee groups branded today’s swoop on the camp in northern France "distressing" and called for Britain to consider taking in some of the dozens of detained child immigrants. Some 600 French police surrounded the site on the edge of the English Channel port of Calais in an early morning swoop. Of the 278 people detained in the raid 132 were listed as children. The tent city was completely dismantled by bulldozers amid angry protests and tears from the camp-dwellers.Dozens of protesters had also gathered at the site, home to mainly Afghan refugees ahead of the operation and chanted "shame on France" as police moved in. There were scuffles as the camp dwellers, some in tears, were led away. And because the people living there were told last night what would happen, one aid agency says families fled, leaving small children behind.

Gemma Juma, policy manager at the Refugee Council, branded the camp's "hideous" conditions as shameful today and called on Britain to look at taking in any children with links to this country. "We've always been concerned about the vulnerability of the people living in hideous conditions. The fact that so many are so young should make us ashamed that a better solution hasn't been found before now," she said. "We need to make sure all of those children are safe and properly looked after. "If this means, in a small number of cases, bringing them to the UK to be reunited with friends and family then, as an option, that should not be ruled out."

French immigration minister Eric Besson hailed the operation. "My objective was not to round up the greatest possible number of migrants by surprising them at dawn, but to destroy the continuous flow of trafficked human beings," he said. Britain’s Home Secretary Alan Johnson praised the "swift and decisive" clearing of the site by French authorities. But Julia Ravenscroft, spokeswoman for Refugee Action, said: "There were some distressing scenes and some very young people taken from the camp this morning. The fact that the French had let people know what was going to happen in the morning meant that some of the very vulnerable, including children, were left behind." Lisa Nandy, policy adviser at the Children's Society, added: "We are concerned by the reports that children have been detained. Obviously, it's a scary and terrifying experience for them - it would be for anyone - and we just hope that their care is prioritised from now. They should be given the opportunity to claim asylum in the UK and elsewhere."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children