France demolishes Paris camps

Hundreds of French police began dismantling a huge migrant camp in northeast Paris on Friday in a fresh sign of the government's determination to take refugees off the streets and into shelters.

The clearance of the camp in the Stalingrad area of the city, home to up to three thousand migrants, came less than two weeks after the demolition of the "Jungle" camp in Calais.

Starting at dawn, police arrived to wake up people sleeping in tents or on mattresses out in the open under an overhead metro line, 15 minutes' walk from the Gare du Nord railway station.

The evacuation started calmly and in orderly fashion, with many migrants confused about where they would be taken on government-chartered buses but there were no signs of resistance or violence.

"Where are they taking people? Somewhere in Paris or outside?" worried Abderrahmane, a 19-year-old from Guinea.

The area around Stalingrad, a gritty multiethnic area, is a magnet for migrants arriving in Paris and has been repeatedly cleared by police, only to spring back into life days later.

But six months before elections, President Francois Hollande has said he is determined to take refugees off the streets and has said France needs to show them a better welcome.

Cheers for the buses

While activists have welcomed this fresh political will to tackle a long-standing problem, they stress that France has been slow to react to a crisis that has grown in intensity over the last two years.

It has lagged behind other countries, Germany in particular, in providing appropriate lodgings for refugees.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced the city's first government refugee camp, which will have an initial capacity for 400 men. It is set to open this month in a disused railway yard in the north of the capital.

The arrival of the first bus, before dawn, on Friday was greeted with cheers from a crowd of hundreds of Afghans who had gathered, bags packed, to take it.

"I don't know where we are going," said Khalid, a 28-year-old Afghan. "The important thing for me is to have my papers. I have been here in a tent for a month, it's good to leave."

Migrants wait to board buses as part of their transfer by French authorities to reception centers across the country during the dismantlement of makeshift camps in Paris on Friday. Benoit Tessier / Reuters