A Syrian family smile after arriving on a ferry carrying about 2,500 migrants from Greek islands, in Greece’s main port of Piraeus near Athens, on Thursday, August 20, 2015.
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Officials initially said the ship, which has acted as a floating accommodation and registration center since Sunday, was heading for the northern port of Thessaloniki.
The number of migrants making their way to Greece is rising rapidly, with almost 21,000 landing on its already busy islands last week alone, the UN said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency says a Syrian woman drowned and nine other migrants were rescued after their boat sank Friday off the coast of Bodrum, as they tried to reach the Greek island of Kos.
MSF is now providing medical assistance at the Captain Elias hotel, a disused, dilapidated building without electricity, where hundreds of refugees are seeking shelter, for on average 10 to 15 days before being registered by the Greek police and receiving the paper authorizing them to move on from the island – most without being properly informed on the process itself.
As part of efforts to decongest overburdened islands, Greek authorities have been registering the personal details of thousands of migrants arriving on Lesvos, Kos and other islands.
Buses were waiting on the quayside to ferry refugees, many of them families with young children, to train stations.
“Unfortunately, refugee reception facilities in Greece are minimal”, said Christos Gkortselidis, a lawyer for the two Syrian men, aged 19 and 25.
Due to the influx of migrants to the EU from countries like Syria, the European Council recently announced it’s addition of hot spot teams which will assist frontline member states in identifying, interviewing and fingerprinting newly-arrived migrants.
The coast guard said it had also found 519 people in 16 search and rescue operations from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning off the coasts of Samos, Agathonissi, Kos and Farmakonissi. “Whether they will go, I don’t know”.
Sneaking across into Macedonia by foot has become a popular route in recent years for migrants to make their way to richer northern European countries.
“I will go to Europe, I don’t want any war”.
Elsewhere, Macedonia deployed riot police in armoured vehicles and called out the army in an attempt to cut off the flow of migrants and refugees pouring in from Greece.
The wish of many migrants on Kos to reach Germany was reflected by Berlin’s announcement on Wednesday that it expected to receive a record 800,000 asylum-seekers and refugees this year, four times last year’s number. The convention, established after World War II, defines a refugee as “a person who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of his or her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.
The permit does not allow travel to other countries.
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A further 642 refugees were collected from more than half a dozen greek islands and transported to the capital the same day.
