Powder Keg Paris: As a devastating report reveals 300,000 illegal migrants are living in one French suburb... ANDREW MALONE explores the tensions in a community at odds with mainstream society

Andrew Malone ventured into the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis for a week

The neighbourhood is home to as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants

Many rely on crime or the 'black economy' to get by and live in poverty

He found rule of French law, equality, religious freedom, was lost in the suburb

There are more mosques there than anywhere else and 35 known jihadis

By ANDREW MALONE IN PARIS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 23:27 BST, 27 July 2018 | UPDATED: 01:56 BST, 28 July 2018

On a steamy summer's night, the sounds and smells are of Africa. Hawkers grill meat on fires built inside shopping trolleys.

Others sell corn, which pops on the flames. People jostle and sweat; thick smoke hangs in the air.

West African women — les Reines de Marchand, the Queens of the Market — sell fake designer clothes. Hustlers in sunglasses work the crowds.

'Burrha! Burrha!,' they shout, holding bags of counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes.

Some voices are from sub-Saharan Africa — Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone. Afghans shout and joke in Pashtun; others speak in languages I have not heard before.

There are thousands at this open market — haggling, eating and drinking.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6001135/A-devastating-repor...