Italian police struggle to contain migrants at border with France - video

The scene on the border between Italy and France is 'a punch in the eye for those who refuse to see,' said the Italian interior minister

(JEAN CHRISTOPHE MAGNENET | AFP | Getty Images)

Italian police are struggling to deal with growing numbers of African migrants along the border with France, with politicians calling on the European Union to share 40,000 refugees.

The latest video from Ventimiglia, the Italian town next to Menton in France, shows police trying to round by migrants to place them on a Red Cross bus. Yet a crowd emerges to protest and the police can only watch as several migrants run away.

African migrants have been stranded on the rocks along the Italian coast as they await to move on from Italy to France or other countries in the EU.

However, the French will not let them into their country because of the Treaty of Dublin, which says migrants are the responsibility of what ever country they entered first when they arrived in Europe.

Police have been forcibly removing the migrants all day. However, migrants who are camped on rocks jutting out along the coast were being left alone as police did not want to venture anywhere too treacherous.

With Italy struggling to cope with the migrant influx, a member of the country's 5 Star party accused the French of sending refugees back over the border for the Italians to deal with. The 5 Star member said he had seen migrants in Ventimiglia with receipts for goods purchased in Paris.

The Italians are calling on European Union countries to agree to share 40,000 refugees, with Italy's Angelino Alfano calling for other nations to stand by his country and Greece, as they were at the front line of the migrant crisis.

Alfano was talking at a meeting of EU interior ministers. They are discussing the relocation of Syrian and Eritrean refugees over the next few years. So far, only 10 of the 28 countries of the EU support the plan.

While Alfano said that the scene in Ventimiglia was "a punch in the eye for those who refuse to see," Bernard Cazaneuve, the French minister of the interior, denied that France had closed its border at Menton.

Additional reporting by the AP.