CALAIS: Mysterious armed groups are on the prowl, targeting migrants in night attacks in Calais and elsewhere in northern France, sowing fear among the displaced travellers living in squalid slums and deepening concerns the city is becoming a tinderbox of anti-migrant, anti-Muslim rage that’s fueling a budding nationalist movement.

The stalkers, sometimes masked, slip through the night armed with clubs, brass knuckles, pepper spray or knives, according to accounts by migrants and groups working to provide medical and legal help.

After months of what appear to be organised attacks, police made their first arrests on Thursday, taking seven men armed with iron bars and extendable batons into custody for a suspected attack on five Iraqi Kurds at Loon-Plage, a port town between Calais and nearby Dunkirk.

The seven faced charges of violence in a group and forming a group to commit violence, said Dunkirk prosecutor Eric Fouard. Some of the men, aged 24-47, said they sympathised with extreme-right movements in Calais identified as xenophobic, he said.

“The ideas they peddle are that there are too many migrants in France,” Fouard said by telephone, noting that one of the seven was from Brittany and another from the Paris region.

The head of a legal centre set up for the refugees in the makeshift Calais camp alleged on Friday that those living there are regularly subject to police violence, as well. Marianne Humbersot told reporters she was filing 13 complaints — five for violence by militia and eight at the hands of police.

“I have a 13 year old who had his foot broken. And 10 days before being attacked by police, he had his nose broken by racists,” Humbersot said.

Migrants — who have converged in northern France hoping to sneak into Britain — have also long complained about police brutality, accounts backed up by medical units that treat them.

But attacks in recent months, accounts suggest, are organized and carried out by a militia-style group or groups, opening a new dimension of violence.

A growing security crackdown aimed at keeping thousands of migrants from reaching Britain is giving Calais a fortress-like look.

The city bristles with tall barbed wire fences, blinks with police lights and is disfigured by open spaces cleared of brush — including at the two entrances to the camp — so police can better survey. Among the city’s population, a potentially toxic cocktail of frustration and anger is brewing, with pro- and anti-migrant groups facing off in demonstrations.

On social networks, anti-migrant groups, often calling themselves “patriots,” are using increasingly virulent language.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016