Drones and dogs are being used to hunt down migrants trying to slip across the border from Italy into France, as police play a cat and mouse game with asylum seekers desperate to reach northern Europe.

Hundreds of migrants, most of them African, have been stuck in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia for months, their dreams of reaching France, Scandinavia and the UK thwarted by the closure of the French frontier.

In the past few days, many have tried to cross from Italy into France at night, trekking along woodland paths that were once used by smugglers of contraband goods during the Second World War.

By day they hide in the undergrowth or in the arches of railway bridges, keeping hunger at bay by eating wild figs or whatever food they have managed to carry with them.

But French police are determined to stop them and have deployed drones and Malinois, or Belgian shepherd dogs, to track them down.

“I’m dead tired. In the woods I had nothing to eat but I’m determined to go back within a few days,” one young Sudanese migrant told La Repubblica newspaper after being captured by police.