French rail company 'hopeful' for extra tunnel police
French rail bosses are "hopeful" more police will be deployed at the Channel Tunnel to stop asylum seekers storming a freight depot.
Rail company SNCF have asked the French government for extra police patrols at the site at Frethun, near Calais.
The move is a bid to prevent a repeat of last Thursday's storming of the yard by 200 asylum seekers.
It was the latest in a series of assaults by would-be immigrants housed at the controversial Sangatte Red Cross centre on the outskirts of Calais.
As a result, freight trains through the tunnel were suspended this weekend although a backlog of 17 trains passed through the tunnel last night and this morning.
Eurostar and Shuttle services, which also carry freight lorries, are unaffected.
Eric Martos, spokesman for French rail operator SNCF, which runs the site, said: "Our opinion is that the Gendarmerie must be here every day, especially at night, as when they are here we do not have many problems.
"The only thing to do is to have more police here and I think the Gendarmerie have agreed to send more but we will find out on Monday."
SNCF have asked for more officers so they can run services between 4pm and 3am. Freight trains have been running from 9pm to 3am for the past four months, forcing 1,700 freight trains to be cancelled.
Mr Martos said that SNCF had seized 7,000 would-be immigrants in the yard since the start of the year and were as frustrated as freight companies in Britain about the asylum seeker problem.
