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Stretching far into the horizon along a ridge that divides Europe from Asia, this is the super-fence blocking thousands of illegal migrants hoping for a new life.

As police in Calais struggle to contain thousands trying to storm the Eurotunnel in their desperation to get into Britain, the Bulgarian authorities are shoring up their border with Turkey.

Patrolled by thousands of armed guards and enforced with night-vision CCTV cameras, the four-metre high steel wall on Bulgaria’s southern fringe is an impregnable barrier of densely packed razor wire coils.

For the ruthless criminal gangs exploiting families fleeing war and terror in Syria, Iraq and North Africa the message is clear – fortress Europe is shutting its back door.

Thousands of police seconded to European Union patrols are here, meaning even more people will put themselves in the hands of the traffickers. Now the Bulgarian government has started constructing a new section of fence to seal its entire border.

“Our operation has stopped more than 500 migrants from crossing in the last month alone,” says Bulgarian Border Police chief Ivan Stoyanov.

“Half were arrested by our Turkish colleagues and half were sent back. The aim of the migrants is not Bulgaria. They often want to get to other European countries like Britain. They use us as a place of transit."

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The Daily Mirror is the first British newspaper to see the barrier built to stop migrants flooding into Europe.

Infra-red motion-sensitive cameras mean parents carrying their children in bundles are rounded up as they try to smuggle themselves across Europe's frontier under cover of darkness.

The fence is monitored 24/7 by armed guards stationed at strategic points along its current 50-mile length.

Border police look into Turkey from watchtowers with binoculars.

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Bulgaria is also drafting in soldiers to fortify its defences against ISIS as fanatics try to slip back into Europe.

The country was previously considered an easy route back and ISIS included Bulgaria in its declaration map of an Islamic caliphate.

Imran Khawaja, who was pictured posing with a severed head in an ISIS stronghold, travelled from Bulgaria in his cousin's taxi after making the crossing last year.

And French terror suspect, Fritz-Joly Joachin - linked to the Charlie Hebdo gunmen Cherif and Said Kouachi - has also been arrested in Bulgaria near the border crossing.

But for thousands of terrified families fleeing the extremists, the fence also represents the end of a desperate dream.

(Image: North Downs Picture Agency)

One of the lucky few to have made it into Bulgaria is Mahmoud Mardnli, 46, once the fitness coach for the Syrian national basketball team. I meet him at Harmanli refugee camp, a former Bulgarian Army barracks in which Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi families are crammed into mouldy rooms designed for a single soldier to sleep in.

More than two thirds of the 2,000 refugees here are Syrians.

It took Mahmoud, from battle-ravaged Aleppo, more than a year to reach this sanctuary with his wife Hadija, 33, and their two children, Sally, four, and Laura, four months.

Having travelled across much of Turkey hidden in the back of vehicles, they completed the final 200 miles on foot.

(Image: North Downs Picture Agency)

Mahmoud brandishes a treasured team line-up photograph, in which he smiles from a row of celebrating players.

The photograph was one of the few possessions he managed to stuff into a bag as they ran for their lives from their smouldering apartment building following a bombing raid.

That it has survived the extraordinary journey he describes to me is little short of miraculous.

“I was carrying our eldest daughter, and my wife was carrying Laura,”

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Mahmoud tells me. “Every day we would walk maybe 20 kilometres. We were begging for food and drinking water from the river when we could. At nights we slept in barns. All we had to keep us warm were our clothes. No blankets. I put my coat over our baby who would fall asleep on my wife.

“For a long time we were in a large group and one of the men seemed to know the way, so we followed him. As we got closer we all had to separate because we didn't want to be noticed.

“One day we could see the fence at the top of the hill as we walked through some fields. That was not something we had planned for. No one mentioned a fence to us. I could see the watchtowers and the patrol vehicles driving around. There were a lot of people there. I think they were construction workers still banging in the metal fence posts.

“They had not finished it, but we knew that area would be heavily guarded, so we had to take a long detour. We were crawling up a steep, muddy slope. Our clothes were torn and our arms were scratched from the thorny bushes we had to push through.”

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Mahmoud realised he and his family were in Bulgaria when they reached a village and a man addressed him in a language he had never heard before.

“After that we followed a dirt track through where the old border used to be, past a metal checkpoint,” Mahmoud recalls. “Someone must have spotted us because we were picked up by the police and arrested. They had been waiting.

“I had paid a trafficker more than £10,000. He promised he would get us safely into Europe, but when it came to it we were abandoned.

“He told us we would be given fake passports that would enable us to get to Germany, France, Holland or Britain. There is no other answer. Now we are here, but we expect to be sent back after six months.”

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Mahmoud and his family sleep on two mattresses in their cell-like room and cook their meagre meals on a grease-stained single ring burner balanced dangerously on a chair.

They have draped an old blanket over the window, but it provides no privacy.

Around the old parade ground outside, washing lines hang between trees and piles of burning rubbish.

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Kabul university graduate Raza Musazai, who got into Bulgaria in the back of a truck, says increased security led to him being arrested when he reached the border.

I meet father-of-three Raza, 28, queuing outside an internet café near Harmanli.

“I need to tell my family I am here,” he says. “They haven't heard from me in months. The trafficker would not let us have phones.

“I had to leave because my life was under threat. I knew it would be impossible to carry my children over mountains.

“I walked across Iran. We slept in the daytime in old buildings with no roof, places where shepherds keep their animals. I've been travelling by night. Often we would be running from the police. The money we paid the trafficker was to stay alive. Now I'm here, I fear I will be sent back.”

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Pressure group Human Rights Watch says Bulgarian border police are violating international law by routinely abusing Syrian asylum seekers and sending them back into Turkey.

After taking me to the border fence in his jeep, Mr Stoyanov is eager to show off the HQ in Elhovo.

Seven officers monitor a bank of TV screens displaying live footage along the fence.

They are in constant radio contact with their colleagues on patrol.

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Boris Chershikov, UNHCR spokesman in Bulgaria, explains many arrivals have had their ID documents taken from them by smugglers as a ransom.

“We are seeing a lot of people fleeing ISIS,” he confirms. “It is unprecedented with so many conflicts simultaneously happening, leading so many people to flee.

“The fence is there to keep people out but it means asylum seekers undertake more perilous journeys and pay higher rates to smugglers.”

Former Bulgarian Army officer Marco Petrov, who oversees the camp, says: “I think this place will become a permanent facility even though we only opened it one year ago. I think there will be a continual flow of people because of the conflicts that continue in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

On the road outside Harmanli is a statue of a woman holding up the European Union flag. It is crumbling, like the dreams of the people inside the camp.