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EUROTUNNEL

Eurotunnel trains resume after serious delays

Eurotunnel services were returning to normal on Monday after passengers had been advised to avoid travelling on Sunday due to severe delays.

Published: 21 December 2015 08:30 CET
Eurotunnel trains resume after serious delays
Photo: AFP

Thousands of people travelling between and Britain and France faced severe delays on Sunday due to a fault affecting the
Eurotunnel train service, a company spokesman said.

Delays of up eight hours have affected 11,000 vehicles, and customers with tickets for Sunday evening were advised to postpone their travel plans until early Monday.

“Eurotunnel apologises for the inconvenience these essential but unplanned repairs have caused,” the spokesman said.

Eurostar services, which unlike the Eurotunnel service does not carry vehicles, were also disrupted, the company said.

The fault was fixed late on Sunday but timetables were still disrupted, and extra trains were added to the service to clear the passenger backlog, Eurotunnel said on its official Twitter account.

Normal service is expected from early Monday, and the company will honour the tickets of customers who postponed their journeys, the spokesman said.

 

 

 

 

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IMMIGRATION

UK slammed for giving asylum to tunnel walker

The company which operates the Channel Tunnel said on Tuesday Britain's decision to grant asylum to a Sudanese man who walked the passage between France and England was "unfortunate".

Published: 6 January 2016 08:30 CET
UK slammed for giving asylum to tunnel walker
Photo: AFP

Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was granted asylum on December 24, after being arrested on suspicion of walking through the 31-mile (50 kilometre) tunnel in August.

“It is unfortunate because it can give bad ideas to certain migrants and encourage them to risk their lives,” a spokesman for Eurotunnel told AFP.

The Channel operator has struggled for months with migrants storming their premises to get into the tunnel and attempt to make their way to Britain.

Stepped-up security has significantly slowed the attempts to get through, but in mid-December between 800 and 1,000 migrants made a desperate bid to storm the tunnel, resulting in clashes with security forces.

Local government estimates up to 4,500 people fleeing war and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa are living in notoriously squalid conditions in a makeshift camp in Calais known as the “Jungle”.

Many of the refugees and migrants want to reach Britain because they speak English, or because they have relatives there, others simply believe their chances of a better life are higher in Britain.

At least 18 have died since last June trying to get across the Channel, but Haroun was one of the few make it through alive.

He was arrested in Kent, in southeast England, and charged under an 1861 law on malicious damage with causing an obstruction to an engine or carriage using the railway.

His case was on Monday postponed for two weeks while prosecutors weigh whether to proceed with it.

With security tight around the Calais Jungle, authorities in Belgium said this week that a growing number of migrants are seeking to leave for Britain from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, located some 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of Calais.

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