TEMPO.CO, Lille/Arras, France-A migrant was killed during the night of Thursday to Friday after being hit by a freight train on the site of the Channel tunnel near Calais, firefighters said, taking the death toll there among people trying to reach Britain to 16 since June.

The body was found by firefighters alongside a train platform in Coquelles, northern France. The force of the impact made it immediately impossible to identify the victim's sex, age or nationality.

Thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East fleeing war and poverty at home and lodged in makeshift camps in the French port of Calais are trying to enter Britain by jumping onto lorries or hiding on trains, disrupting cross-Channel freight and passenger traffic.

The influx has plunged the 28-nation European Union into crisis. Its leaders were discussing their responses at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

The number of migrants in the Calais camp on France's north coast has doubled to close to 6,000 people, the prefect for the region said on Friday.

Pas-de-Calais department prefect Fabienne Buccio said the number of people in the camp had gone over 3,000 before the summer and then stabilised, but that in the past three weeks the number of people had nearly doubled to close to 6,000 people.

"I do not know what comes next, but 6,000 is a maximum," she told Reuters, adding local authorities were struggling to strike a balance between providing for the migrants and applying French state laws.

REUTERS | NZM