French police have started evacuating thousands of migrants from an illegal camp in north eastern Paris where numbers soared after the closure of the large "Jungle" camp in the port city of Calais.
Police moved in at daybreak. They escorted migrants to dozens of buses from the sprawl of tents and mattresses where numbers living rough surged in recent days to as many as 3,000.
A spokeswoman for the Paris prefecture said the migrants - many from war-ravaged countries such as Afghanistan and Sudan - would be transferred to holding centres in and around the French capital pending the processing of asylum requests.
"The evacuation operation is running smoothly so far," she said, adding that all the migrants would be moved out on Friday. Some 600 police officers were deployed at the location.
The estimated total of around 3,000 at the Paris camp is about twice as many as just a week ago when the bigger camp in Calais was evacuated and demolished.
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