Four teenage migrants were in critical condition after being shot and more than a dozen others were injured, some seriously, during clashes in the northern French port of Calais between Afghans and Africans, local authorities said.

Some 22 people were hospitalised Thursday, according to an official total, including four Eritreans aged between 16 and 18 who needed surgery, local prosecutors said. Another wounded migrant was taken to the nearby city of Lille because of his “very serious state of health,” the local prefect’s office said.

“We have reached an escalation of violence that has become unbearable for both those from Calais and migrants,” said interior minister Gerard Collomb during a visit to one of the sites of the clashes. “This is a level of violence never seen before.”

Two police officers were also injured during the clashes.

A nearly two-hour fight broke out on the southern outskirts of Calais among about 100 Eritreans and some 30 Afghans who had been queueing for food handouts. It started when an Afghan fired shots.

A second fight then broke out at an industrial site around three miles (5km), with more than a hundred Eritreans armed with iron rods and sticks fighting about 20 Afghans, prosecutors said.

“Police intervened to protect the Afghan migrants faced with 150 to 200 Eritrean migrants,” the local prefecture said, adding that security reinforcements were being deployed in the area.

Further violence broke out late afternoon in an industrial area of Calais.

A migrant receives medical assistance following clashes in Calais. Photograph: Johan Ben Azzouz/EPA

It was the worst violence in Calais since clashes on 1 July 2017 left 16 people wounded. A year earlier in June, 40 people were injured in clashes in the northern port town which draws migrants trying to cross the Channel into Britain.



The notorious “Jungle” camp in Calais, once home to about 10,000 people hoping to make it to Britain, was demolished in 2016, but hundreds of migrants remain in the port city seeking to stow away on trucks bound for England.



Those left, most of them young African and Afghan men, have been living rough in the woods and clash regularly with police. Grim living conditions have led to regular confrontations between migrants of different nationalities; five people were shot in a fight between rival Afghan groups last November.

Charities working with migrants in the area say around 800 are living in Calais, while local authorities put the numbers at 550-600.

Last month, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, vowed zero tolerance for camps such as the Jungle and secured a new border security deal with Britain which will pay more to stop migrants trying to reach its shores.

Macron has said he wants to step up expulsions of economic migrants while speeding up waiting times for asylum applications – an approach he touts as mixing “humanity” and “efficiency”.

But his tougher line has earned criticism from some of his allies, with his former senior aide Jean Pisano-Ferry among those signing a hard-hitting open letter claiming Macron risked betraying his image as a humanist.