Fylakio: Greek officials and the UN’s refugee agency expressed concern at rising numbers of vulnerable people entering via the land border with Turkey, including families and unaccompanied children. “The rise concerns especially unaccompanied minors,” Margaritis Petritzikis, the senior UNHCR official at Fylakio camp on Greece’s northeast border with Turkey, said on Friday. A third of the camp’s occupants — 93 out of a total of 265 — were unaccompanied minors, said camp director Irini Logotheti. But the facility can currently only hold 180 people, she added.
“We have observed that people arriving... are vulnerable people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, with very young children,” she said. In the first 10 months of the year, 11,003 people have entered Greece through the northeastern border from Turkey: 40 per cent more than during the same period in 2017, said Logotheti. The number of vulnerable people over that period was up by 73 per cent, she added. Each day, at least 60 people are forwarded to other camps around Thessaloniki or in Athens, but an equivalent number arrives to take their place, Logotheti said.
The UNHCR plans to install another 13 containers at the camp in December, increasing camp capacity to 400. In March 2016, the EU imposed tighter restrictions on migrants trying to reach Europe via the Greek islands in the Aegean lying closest to Turkey. Since then, the land route from Turkey has become the most heavily used by would-be migrants entering Greece. — AFP
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