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Teen killed by train at Eurotunnel in France

A teenage refugee has been killed trying to cross the Channel Tunnel into Britain, officials said.

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Emergency services found an Eritrean, a minor, dead when he arrived near the entrance of the Channel tunnel.

Medical sources in Calais told IBTimes United Kingdom that the police had confirmed the death of the man, believed to be between 15 to 17 years old.

A spokesman for the Pas de Calais Prefecture, the local administration, said: “At around 2am a freight shuttle struck a migrant who was crossing the tracks on the site of the Channel Tunnel”.

About a dozen migrants have died since this summer near Calais, where they are camped in hopes of reaching a better life in Britain.

In July, Eurotunnel said 2,000 attempts a night were being made to get into the tunnel, but new fences erected around the tracks, as well as a beefed-up police presence, have greatly reduced the number of intrusions.

A man died last week after he was electrocuted at the Eurotunnel entrance, later found on the roof of a freight train.

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Amid a continued refugee crisis throughout Europe, an estimated 5,000 refugees fleeing countries including Syria, Libya and Eritrea are thought to be camped in and an around the French port town of Calais.

European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker left embraces Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel during an emergency EU heads of state summit on the migrant crisis at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday Sept. 23 2015