migrant express: Stowaways leap aboard UK-bound freight trains to sneak through Channel Tunnel amid Calais chaos

• More than 40 migrants seen stowing away on a train to Britain this month
• Men squatted in freight train carriage via Channel Tunnel to Folkestone 
• Britain's 'national crisis' in Calais said to cost the country £750,000 a day
• Earlier this week 80 migrants were caught by police after arriving on trains 

Squatting in an empty freight train carriage, illegal migrants take advantage of the chaos at Calais caused by French strikes to catch a ride to the UK.

More than 40 young men were pictured stowing away on a train as it made its 31-mile journey via the Channel Tunnel to Folkestone overnight earlier this month.

It came as the Freight Transport Association warned that the situation in Calais was now a ‘national crisis’ for Britain which costs £750,000 a day.

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Britain beware: Squatting in an empty freight train carriage, illegal migrants take advantage of the chaos at Calais caused by French strikes to catch a ride to the UK

More than 40 young men were pictured stowing away on a train as it made its 31-mile journey via the Channel Tunnel to Folkestone (pictured)

A source told a newspaper: ‘The last incident happened on Monday, pretty much where the train gets into the UK. There were about 80 just sat there.

‘When it stopped the police came down and picked them up. They shouldn’t be sending trains through with immigrants on them.

‘Some have fallen off and died. It seems to happen on a lot of the nights. People need to know it is happening.’

The Freight Transport Association warned that the situation in Calais (freight near the port pictured) was now a ‘national crisis’ for Britain which costs £750,000 a day

Hazardous: Nine people have died in just eight weeks, trying to make the journey from Calais to the UK

Desperate: An estimated 5,000 migrants are camped at the northern French port town of Calais, waiting for an opportunity to reach the UK

John Keefe, from tunnel operator Eurotunnel, said ‘handfuls’ were now getting through rather than more earlier in the month. But Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘These people are ingenious. They are going to find any way to get into this country. The authorities need to be one step ahead.’

And fellow Tory MP Andrew Percy added: ‘This is unacceptable. The authorities in Calais need to get a grip or stop sending the trains at all.’ Strikes by hundreds of French lorry drivers have backed up traffic and caused severe delays in Kent and northern France.

As no freight can get through to be loaded on to the carriages, they’re left empty, although the trains still depart for Britain at a rate of up to four an hour.

Operation Stack – in which freight traffic is forced to queue on sections of the M20 when cross-Channel services are disrupted – will continue until at least tomorrow, according to Kent police.

The Freight Transport Association’s deputy chief executive James Hookham said that the value of goods lost and the cost to business had turned the situation into a ‘national crisis’.

‘This is the country’s GDP and exports standing still in these horrendous queues caused by the situation in Calais,’ he said.

‘It is simply not acceptable that industrial action in France can cause such chaos which is impacting on the British economy.

‘Calais has to be made a strike-free zone so that cross-Channel traffic can start moving again and Operation Stack can be lifted as soon as possible.’

NINE MIGRANTS DIE TRYING TO REACH BRITAIN IN JUST EIGHT WEEKS

Nine migrants have died trying to reach Britain from Calais in just eight weeks.

French authorities revealed yesterday that seven migrants had died in seven weeks of crisis.

Two further deaths have been reported, following the discovery of a teenager's body on the roof of a Eurotunnel train, and the death of a woman on the A16 motorway.

An unnamed teenager drowned on Sunday as he tried to break into the Channel Tunnel.

He fell into a 20 feet deep water retention basin, and could not get back out of the concrete structure.

‘Everything points to the young man having drowned,’ said the source, who said that intrusions into the secure area around the Tunnel were now a daily occurrence.

Recent other fatal victims have included a Pakistani named only as Mohammed who died of his burns on Friday after being electrocuted by a pylon next to the Tunnel. 

Two of his companions also suffered severe injuries and are currently in hospital.

On July 7, Getnet, an Ethiopian, fell off a freight train inside the tunnel, and died after fracturing his spine. 

In early July, a six months pregnant Eritrean woman fell off a truck she was trying to get into, and suffered life-threatening injuries. 

Samir, her unborn child, did not survive and was buried in Calais.

On June 29, a 23-year-old Eritrean woman identified as Zebiba, 23, died following a collision with a car on a busy Calais motorway.

And on June 26, an Ethiopian man died on a concrete pylon while trying to get on board a freight train travelling at high speed. 

Another Ethiopian died on the A16 motorway on June 1.