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Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Latest: French official says 200 trafficking gangs found

France's top security official says 200 human-trafficking networks have been dismantled since the beginning of the year, including 30 in the tense Calais region where thousands of migrants are hoping to cross the Channel for a better life in Britain. Northern France, in particular the Calais region, has become the increasingly desperate temporary home to thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in their homelands. Germany's federal police are conducting raids against international human trafficking networks across Germany. A federal police spokesman said Wednesday they were targeting "criminal, internationally operating trafficking groups." Greece's coast guard says the total number of people rescued from a boat carrying people from Turkey to the nearby Greek island of Lesbos has increased to 65, while a total of five bodies were recovered from the water. The coast guard says a total of 457 people were rescued between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning in 13 separate incidents. Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn says the symbolic gesture of Wednesday's relocation of the first 30 refugees from Greece to his country is "only a start, but a very, very important start."


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com