Greek police yesterday started moving some of the 8,000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed northern border with Macedonia to state-run facilities further south.
Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni early yesterday and about a dozen more buses were lined up ready to take more, witnesses said.
At the latest tally, about 8,200 people were camped at Idomeni.
Photo: AFP
At one point, more than 12,000 lived there after several Balkan nations shut their borders in February, barring migrants and refugees from central and northern Europe.
Greek authorities said they planned to gradually move individuals to state-supervised facilities further south, which had capacity of about 5,000 people. The operation is expected to last several days.
“The evacuation is progressing without any problem,” said Giorgos Kyritsis, a Greek government spokesman for the migrant crisis.
People would be relocated “ideally by the end of the week,” Kyritsis said.
“We have not put a strict deadline on it,” he added.
A witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area, but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.
Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance.
Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people from the camp boarded the buses, footage by state broadcaster ERT showed.
About 1,100 refugees and migrants had been relocated by noon, Greek police said.
A police official said about 1,000 people were blocking the sole railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia.
Protesters demanding passage to northern Europe have for weeks blocked the route, forcing trains to divert through Bulgaria to the east. Some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged Greece to refrain from using force during the transfer of the migrants and refugees.
“It is important that organized movements are voluntary, non-discriminatory and based on well-informed choices,” UN spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.
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