Greece on Monday began moving asylum seekers from
Lesbos in the Aegean islands to the mainland to reduce the pressure
on overcrowded camps.
A ferry took 640 people, mostly minors, women and families, to
Thessaloniki in the north, with another ship due to transfer more
people during the day.
In all, the government plans to relocate 1,500 people from Lesbos,
state broadcaster ERT said.
Thousands of migrants have made it from Turkey to the Greek islands
in recent days, further aggravating the situation in the migrant
camps.
The capacity of the facilities is put at 6,338 people, but the
islands are presently dealing with around 25,000 asylum seekers and
migrants living in poor conditions.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR says that 23,700 people arrived in Greece
by sea since the start of this year alone.
Under a 2016 EU-Turkey deal, Greece keeps the newcomers on its
islands to process their asylum applications.
Some are allowed into
the EU, while the rest are returned to Turkey.
The deal sought to shut down the Balkan migration route, the gateway
to Europe for more than 1 million people in just 10 months of 2015
and 2016. Countries on the route also closed their borders to
migrants, reducing the flow to a trickle.
But people still arrive at a faster pace than the processing of
asylum applications and the deportation.
The new, conservative government in Athens promised to accelerate the
processing of asylum applications tighten border controls in order to
reduce the influx and the pressure on its islands.
Refugees and migrants sit in a bus waiting to be moved from the Moria camp to the port of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos
