Refugees all set to camp in City of Love

Paris will open its first refugee camp in mid-October, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Tuesday, unveiling plans to take hundreds of people off the streets as France struggles to accommodate migrants.

The emergency shelter, which will have an initial capacity of 400 and be solely for men, will be housed on an old railway site in the north of the French capital, Hidalgo said.

Asylum-seekers will be allowed to stay there for “five to 10 days” and receive medical care while waiting for a place in a refugee hostel, the Socialist mayor told reporters.

France has not been on the frontline of the vast influx of migrants to Europe in the last 18 months, with many refugees seeing it mainly as a transit country to other destinations in northern Europe.

But it has an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum seekers, with leaving many people to fend for themselves.

Ms Hidalgo said a second centre, for women and children only, will be opened in Ivry-sur-Seine to the southeast of Paris by the end of the year, she added.