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IMMIGRATION

Planned Norway asylum centre destroyed by fire

Early on Tuesday morning, a fire broke out a planned asylum centre in Hol Municipality in Hallingdal that left the building completely destroyed.

Planned Norway asylum centre destroyed by fire
The former boarding house was due to hose 64 asylum seekers. Photo: Stian Strand / NTB scanpix
Police were notified of the fire at 4.52am on Tuesday. 
 
“The building has suffered great damage but it hasn’t burned completely down. It’s possible the fire brigade will monitor a controlled burn,” police spokesman Ole Kristian Nerby told NTB. 
 
Nerby said it was too early to say anything about the cause of the fire but confirmed that no one was in the building when the fire was discovered. 
 
The building was approved for use as an asylum centre in January. The former boarding house was due to host 64 asylum seekers. 
 
In December, two people were charged with arson for setting fire to a hotel scheduled to house asylum seekers in southwest Norway. That fire was praised on several anti-refugee Facebook pages with warning that “this won’t be the last fire”. 
 

IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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