Five people were killed at and around a migrant camp near Dunkirk, northern France, by “precise shots to the head”, with a self-confessed shooter handing himself over the police hours later.
A 22-year-old French citizen identified as ‘Paul D’ handed himself over to police on Saturday after a series of shootings near a migrant camp at Dunkirk, France, saw five people killed. French newspaper Le Figaro states investigating officers discovered a cache of firearms inside the man’s vehicle and paramedics told the publication that the injuries sustained by victims may have been caused by “automatic weapons”.
Five victims were killed in three shootings, the first taking place at a farmhouse at Wormhout, a small town a little inland from Dunkirk. The operator of a local transit company was killed in front of his family in the courtyard of his home, it is stated, by a gunman who escaped in a car.
Shortly afterwards two migrants resident at the Mardyck migrant camp near Dunkirk were shot. British newspaper The Daily Telegraph citing sources inside the investigation of the killings state the men were both Iraqi Kurds attempting, like all migrants at the Dunkirk camps, to be smuggled by human traffickers into the United Kingdom.
Broadcaster Sky News states it spoke to friends of the two slain Kurds, who said they were walking back after spending the day trying to get to Britain on a smuggler boat and had turned back. They are reported to have said the killed men were called Hamid and Hadi and that: “Initially, we thought he would fire in the air and then he loaded the gun and aimed at us. We saw Azrael [the Islamic Angel of Death]… We saw death with our own eyes. It was God’s will that we survived. In one day, we saw death twice.”
Two further killings took place nearby where two security guards employed at the massive local oil deport and port were also killed. It is reported the self-confessed gunman was a former employee of the port and “It appears that he was involved in a long-running dispute with the security company” and the dead security guards may have been former colleagues.
The man is not known to police for any previous crime or suspicions and is stated to be the legal keeper of a repeating rifle.
The Telegraph report cites their source inside the police investigation who said of the killings all were “precise shots to the head, suggesting the killer had a lot of experience with firearms”.
Dunkirk and its surroundings have been for years the focus for massive, multi-million dollar smuggling operations to get migrants into the United Kingdom, bypassing usual routes and passport controls. Camps like Grande Synthe and Mardyck grow and shrink as factors like the weather and police action push migrants to or disperse them away from the area, but in the past Dunkirk and Calais camps have been described as being like small cities, sustained by demand and the charities which support them.
These areas are by no means strangers to violence, although the methodical killing of five in a day is unusual. As long reported, the towns that host these transit camps have been plagued by murders and other daily violence for many years. While shootings are generally migrant-on-migrant violence, locals have been subjected to beatings and robberies, and in some cases legitimate port customers have been killed by migrants trying to break their way into cross-channel traffic. .
