Concerns are growing for 500 unaccompanied children in the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais as the French authorities prepare to raze their shelters.
The children, the youngest of whom is eight, are mired not only in a legal no man’s land but in the mud-filled camp, where the smell of smouldering rubbish permeates the air and French police guard the bulldozers that are set to clear land that is now filled with tents.
Ali, 16, a Syrian Kurd, arrived at the camp alone early last month having travelled 3,000 miles from his home town of Hasakah in northeast Syria after Islamic State bombarded the city, an attack that he believes killed his parents.
He fled with a cousin to Turkey, where they parted, and he