PICTURED: Desperate migrants' bid to enter UK goes on as Eurostar passengers left stranded
CHAOS at Calais has led to scores of Eurostar passengers having to sleep in London's St Pancras train station.
Ararchy erupted in the French port yesterday as striking workers started fires blocking both ferry and train routes.
As ferry workers shut the port gates, trapping some lorry drivers inside, monstrous queues built up around the train entrace, as passengers and truckers became desperate to get to Britain. The queues still haven't dissipated.
Madness continued after strikers, protesting feared job cuts, also made it onto the tracks setting more tyres alight.
Both Eurotunnel and Eurostar suspended their services due to the disruption.
Huge queues built up at St Pancras station yesterday. Although Eurostar said they provided dinner and a hotel room for "a number of people" last night, others were forced to try and sleep on the cold station floor.
Vanessa Magdelyns, 33, from Brussels, said she and "at least 50" people had spent the night at St Pancras.
She said: "I laid down to rest but there was no sleeping. It was too cold. We didn't get any blankets. When they saw that we werestaying here overnight they could have helped us."
A Eurostar spokeswoman said everything was "running smoothly" today, though lorry drivers believe it will take days for the backlog to be cleared.
Hundreds of lorries were backed up outside the port trying to board trains or take the ferry, leaving them "sitting ducks" for migrants ready to make their bid for Britain.
Frightening images show crowds of migrants storming lorries and climbing aboard.
It’s come to the point where the port of Calais is at full capacity, nothing is coming in and nothing is allowed to go out
More riot police have been drafted into Calais today to try and pacify tensions. The 50 at the scene yesterday were outnumbered by the 200 striking workers and hundreds more migrants attempting to board cargo carriers.
In Britain, Kent Police closed the M20 between junction 8 and junction 9 in an emergency plan it calls Operation Stack.
It was implemented just before 12pm yesterday and is continuing throughout today, turning that stretch of the motorway into a lorry park.
More resources will be put into screening arrivals at Dover, immigration minister James Brokenshire has said.
Mr Brokenshire told the BBC: "It is hugely regrettable that we've seen these incidents occurring as a result of industrial action in France.
"We are putting additional resourcing into the port of Dover to enhance screenings and detections there so that we're looking at this on both sides of the Channel."
He added: "We have been advised the French authorities are sending further policing to deal with law and order issues, and we will be keeping in close contact with them in the hours ahead."
Three trains stuck outside the tunnel on the English side had to return to St Pancras in London yesterday while trains on the French side went back to Paris and Brussels.
The strike by French port workers at Calais has left British lorry drivers sitting ducks for migrants desperate to sneak to the UK.
Hundreds of truckers are still stuck in queues.
A lorry driver told Express.co.uk they are targeted as soon as they stop.
Trucker Chris Cary, 32, said: “When you are queueing you keep yourself locked in your cab and are constantly looking in your mirrors.
“They tried to break the locks and seals. I knew they had been at them because when I checked my vehicle I saw they were all twisted, bent and loose."
He was supposed to get on a ferry at 3.45am yesterday to drive £19,000 worth of energy drinks to his employers MJD’s warehouse in Dartford, Kent.
After hearing of the strike, he tried to get to the Eurotunnel train and drove through a road block of burning tyres erected by the strikers.
Some of the French workers threw rocks at his truck as he drove past.
He was then surrounded by weapon-brandishing immigrants when he got stuck in the queues.
He headed back to the port but the strikers then closed the ramp to his P&O ferry and locked the gates into the port, so he is now stranded inside.
He added: “You might as well put yourself in front of the Houses and Parliament and talk to the brick wall, politicians don’t care what is going on.”
Violence has erupted in the French port town over the last few weeks as migrants desparate to make it to England take the law into their own hands.
Rocks have been thrown at lorries, immigrants have smashed their way onto trucks, and fights have broken out between immigrants and drivers, as well as between themselves.
More than 3,000 migrants are currently living in a shanty town camp on industrial wasteland near the port of Calais dubbed The Jungle 2.
The French workers are striking because about 600 of them are facing redundancy.
MyFerryLink, formerly SeaFrance, announced in May it was ending its contract with the ferry company.
Other workers have came out in sympathy with about 50 protesters trying to stop ferries from leaving for England yesterday.
