December 27, 2001	Thursday	Shawwal 11, 1422

LONDON, Dec 26: The Eurotunnel has been closed after hundreds of asylum seekers stormed French security barriers on Tuesday in an effort to cross into UK.

The tunnel had to be closed for several hours and there were no Eurostar train services on Christmas Day and on Wednesday.

The Eurotunnel officials say about 550 refugees from the nearby Red Cross centre at Sangatte took advantage of the quiet Christmas period to storm the French entrance. The first group of people tried to cross the barriers at 8.10pm on Christmas Day. French police arrested 129 people with none making it into the UK.

At midnight, a second wave of some 400 people was stopped by French riot police using tear gas outside the Calais entrance, forcing the tunnel to remain closed until 6.45am.

Hundreds of people on their way to spend Christmas with their families had to be put up in hotels in the UK and in France.

A spokeswoman for Eurotunnel said that guards were unable to stop hundreds of people storming the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. “We saw them coming on our CCTV cameras but it was impossible to stop them. We had approximately 20 guards there but they had no chance.” The illegal immigrants captured by police have been taken to the Red Cross Centre in Sangatte where around 1,000 people are housed.