PEOPLE smugglers are using women and children as human shields in a diversion tactic to get past French police – before mostly men make it onto a dinghy.
Families with young babies and kids were put at the front of the queue of migrants entering the vast beach from the sand dunes in Gravelines, near Calais, yesterday with young men trailing behind.
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The diversionary tactics meant the 40 police officers, armed and waiting with pepper spray and tear gas, remained calm and did not use force against the group straight away to avoid injuring the children.
Instead, officers kettled the group and successfully marched them off back into the sand dunes.
But, when the time was right and the police thought they had taken the group off the beach, a group of mostly men suddenly sprinted off into the sand dunes before making a break for it back onto the beach.
Most of the migrants with children did not return to the beach.
It comes after senior Labour minister Darren Jones was slammed after suggesting on BBC’s Question Time that the majority of migrants entering by small boats that he had seen were women and children.
A dramatic cat and mouse game followed yesterday with tear gas being fired over Gravelines beach in an attempt to keep migrants away from the sea.
But they failed to stop a nearby dinghy from picking up the migrants and it left for British shores with mostly men on board.
It comes after official figures showed that more than 919 people crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday on 14 dinghies – averaging around 66 people per boat.
It has taken the provisional annual total to 16,183, which is 42 per cent higher than the same point last year and 79 per cent up on the same date in 2023.
The highest daily number so far this year was 1,195 on May 31.
