Over 150,000 people have signed a petition calling on Katie Hopkins to be sacked by tabloid newspaper The Sun after she described migrants as "cockroaches". Writing in her column, Hopkins said those desperate to reach Britain after humanitarian disasters in their own countries were "feral humans" - calling on the government to deploy "gunships" to stop them landing on shore.

Katie HopkinsKatie Hopkins faced a huge backlash for her comments on migrants looking to escape disasters in their own country

Hopkins, who's made a career of her shocking opinions, was criticized heavily on Twitter. 

An online petition on Change.org received 8,000 signatures in its first 18 hours and now is just 37,000 away from reaching its 200,000 target. It is now one of the fastest growing petitions of the year.

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"We live in a forward thinking society and Katie Hopkins' views should not be encouraged; this is why I ask The Sun newspaper and editor David Dinsmore to remove Katie Hopkins as a columnist, at the very least to redeem yourselves from publishing this prejudiced article in the first place," petition author Izzy Saunders wrote by way of a mission statement.

"It's deeply depressing that Katie Hopkins is using such a powerful platform to spread poison about immigrants, but I started this petition because I believe most people in the UK disagree with these extreme views," Saunders later said.

"Our response to the tragedy in the Mediterranean should be to send lifeboats not gunboats."

"Should Britain help migrants in the Med, or should we turn back the boats?" Hopkins had asked her followers on Twitter.

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