Thousands of migrants left stranded after fires raze camp

LESBOS (Greece) • Thousands of migrants remained stranded without shelter on the island of Lesbos for a third day yesterday, sleeping on streets or in fields near Greece's largest refugee camp after fires burned the facility to the ground.

The Moria camp, long notorious for its poor living conditions, had hosted more than 12,000 migrants, four times its stated capacity.

Police reinforcements arrived in Lesbos yesterday. Eleven police vehicles - some stopping the migrants from reaching a nearby port - and two water cannon boosted the heavy police presence seen on the island since the devastating fires late on Tuesday and Wednesday turned the sprawling site into a mass of smouldering metal and melted tents.

While nobody was seriously hurt in the fires, the blaze razed the official part of the camp where 4,000 lived, and the other fire on Wednesday wrecked most of the remaining camp where another 8,000 lived in tents and shacks.

The Greek government said it had secured thousands of tents to provide temporary shelter for the migrants. A passenger ferry docked at the island's port of Mytilene to help provide assistance.

But Athens' plans face stiff resistance from the local authorities and residents who fear the temporary shelters will turn into another permanent migrant camp.

"It is a tragic opportunity for migrants to leave... Moria is a monstrosity," Mr Dimitris Koursoubas, a senior official responsible for migration in the northern Aegean islands, told Reuters.

"We want all the migrants out, for national reasons. Moria is over."

Islanders have set up roadblocks near the burnt-out camp to halt attempts to clean up the site and rehouse the asylum seekers.

Local attitudes on an island at the forefront of the European migrant crisis of 2015-2016, though initially welcoming, have turned largely hostile as the camp population expanded. Most of the migrants are from Afghanistan and Syria. Thousands slept on roadsides and fields for a second night on Thursday. Others camped in a cemetery.

Germany has used the fire to call for more solidarity in Europe and, along with France, agreed to an initiative on Thursday for EU states to share out the roughly 400 children and young people from the camp.

The Netherlands and Finland have also offered to take in some of the young migrants.

"Moria is here to remind us of a Europe we need to change," European Commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas, who visited Lesbos, told the Athens New Agency.

Some European Union states, including Hungary and Poland, have previously refused point-blank to take in any of the migrants.

The Greek government has said the fires were started by asylum seekers reacting to quarantine measures after Covid-19 was detected in the camp, though it has not provided any evidence.

Thirty-five people who fled the fires in the early hours of Wednesday had tested positive for Covid-19, further complicating efforts by the police and local authorities to gather the migrants in one place, near the port, and to provide shelter.

The camp was quarantined last week after a 40-year-old man tested positive for Covid-19. Preparing for a possible surge in cases, the authorities were sending 19,000 test kits to the island.

Greece's conservative government has toughened its asylum restrictions, slashing cash benefits and accommodation provisions to discourage further migration.

The government has also passed a law aiming to limit the access of NGOs and charities to the camps and to boost official control.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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