Migrants are exploiting a reduction in police numbers in Calais to attack lorries with iron bars, baseball bats, tree trunks and tear gas, the town’s mayor said yesterday.

Natacha Bouchart, who met a delegation of British councillors, said there was a record 9,000 migrants in the Jungle and other camps on the northern French coast. The number was growing, with about 100 migrants arriving every day in the hope of boarding a train or lorry across the Channel.

Denis Hurth, a police union delegate, said there were fewer than 1,000 officers in Calais compared with 1,300 last August. This time last year there were about 6,000 migrants in the town. Mrs Bouchart said police had been withdrawn from the Calais area and redeployed during the