French riot police stormed a Calais church at dawn to end a five-day occupation by migrants and evict some 100 Iraqi Kurds and Afghans.
The migrants were led from the Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul church to buses outside after police raided the building just after 5 a.m. local time (4 a.m. Irish time).
The migrants, who came to Calais apparently hoping to travel through the nearby Channel Tunnel and claim asylum in Britain, occupied the church on Saturday and threatened to kill themselves rather than be evicted.
"It was perfect timing. They [the migrants] didn't have time to organise themselves," local parish leader Father Jean-Pierre Boutoille, who was in the church, said of the 30-minute operation. Most inside the building were asleep when the raid began.
The prefecture of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais county said the migrants had been taken to local police stations and would be told they could either apply for asylum in France or face deportation.
Many of those inside have made hazardous journeys across Europe heading for the nearby Sangatte refugee camp, known as a base for migrants to hop into Britain illegally on board trucks and on trains using the Channel Tunnel.
But Sangatte closed its doors to new arrivals last week as part of a deal under which Britain is tightening its asylum laws to discourage migrants, and this left dozens of newcomers with nowhere to go.